Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

LLOYDS TSB BILL [Lords]

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time on Thursday 2 July.

Oral Answers to Questions — TREASURY

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—

Inflation Targets

Mr. James Gray: When he last met the Governor of the Bank of England to discuss inflation targets. [46147]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gordon Brown): I meet the Governor of the Bank of England at regular intervals to discuss a range of issues.

Mr. Gray: The right hon. Gentleman will remember that, on 1 May last year, inflation was on target at 2.5 per cent. and interest rates were 6 per cent. Since then, he has missed his inflation target 12 times out of 13. When will he start hitting it?

Mr. Brown: The previous Government missed their inflation target 43 times out of 55, so we will take no lectures from the Opposition. When we came to power, we found that inflation was going to rise substantially above target and that the action that the previous Government should have taken had not been taken, for all the wrong, party political, reasons. We immediately took action to move the economy from the violence of stop-go economic cycles—which had bedevilled us in the past and which, at the beginning of the 1990s, had given us the worst recession since the war—to a platform of sustainable and steady growth.

Mr. Denis MacShane: Did my right hon. Friend read the remarkably prescient article in the Fabian Review two years ago—it was written by someone I know—which pointed out that the rate of inflation left by the Tories would present us with real problems? It is quite ridiculous for the party of inflation—at least, those Tory Members who turn up to Treasury questions—to raise this issue. Will he, in the fight against inflation, consider a new golden rule—that people, especially those in the

upper reaches of pay, should not give themselves pay awards ahead of productivity? We could start with the outside earnings of Conservative Members.

Mr. Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Wage responsibility all round, from the boardroom outwards, is necessary if we are to tackle inflation. He mentions the record that we inherited from the previous Government. I notice that, in a speech made only last night, the shadow Chancellor said that long-term interest rates in Britain were very low—below 6 per cent. That is because, over the past year, people have seen that we shall meet our inflation target, and long-term interest rates are now the lowest for 30 years.

Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Does the Chancellor accept that two men are responsible for the inflationary difficulties we face—the previous Chancellor, who failed to put up interest rates before the general election, and the right hon. Gentleman himself, who used two Budgets to impose taxes on hard-pressed businesses rather than on free-spending consumers?

Mr. Brown: I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman says. If we had followed his advice, we would be taxing everything under the sun. The Liberal Democrats' policy is to raise taxes on everything and to increase public spending, whereas we have imposed strong discipline both on public spending and on taxation. We cut VAT on fuel, without a great deal of support from him; we have reduced corporation tax from 33p to 31p and now to 30p; we have reduced small business taxation; we have abolished the gas levy; and from next April, national insurance for every employee will be cut. We are determined to provide the resources to encourage both work incentives and the investment that is necessary in industry. We are taking measures for long-term stability and growth in the British economy, and it is about time that the Liberal Democrat party started to support us.

Mr. Geraint Davies: Is my right hon. Friend reasonably pleased that unit wage costs rose by 3.2 per cent. in the first quarter of this year—they rose by 3.6 per cent., which is much more, in the last quarter of 1997—and that the number of jobs advertised in the national press is up by a third on the peak during the 1980s boom?

Mr. Brown: There are many vacancies in the economy—more than 200,000 vacancies are registered with the Employment Service, and there are 75,000 vacancies in the hotel and hospitality industry alone. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The public sector has contributed to wage responsibility with wage rises of around 2.5 per cent, but there must be responsibility all round in the economy. That is why I said in the pre-Budget statement in November that responsibility would be necessary in the boardroom and right across the private sector. We are determined to tackle the inflationary problem that we inherited from the previous Government, to put the economy on a long-term stable path for non-inflationary growth.

Mr. Francis Maude: Why was the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee not informed of the Chancellor's plans to abandon his public


spending limits? Does the Chancellor agree with Professor Goodhart, who told the Select Committee on the Treasury that the Chancellor's spending plans would increase inflationary pressure even further, making it likely that interest rates would have to go up yet again?

Mr. Brown: I welcome the shadow Chancellor to his new job and his first Question Time. I also welcome him on his return to the Treasury brief following his period as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1990–92.
The Governor of the Bank of England has reported to the Treasury Committee—I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will confirm that he agrees—as follows:
Of course we knew as everybody else knew that the Chancellor was undertaking his expenditure review.
He went on:
I knew that the report was unlikely to change the fiscal outlook over the next couple of years.

Mr. Maude: It is not true.

Mr. Brown: It is a statement from the Governor of the Bank of England. If the right hon. Gentleman intends to contest a statement that is in the Treasury Committee's record, he had better think again. The fact is that there is a fiscal tightening in the economy of 3.5 per cent. over three years. That continues into next year, as I reported in my public expenditure statement.
Let us be clear on public spending prudence. The previous Government had a current deficit of 1.5 per cent. of gross domestic product over the cycle, the equivalent of a deficit of £12 billion a year. That is why we inherited a national debt that had doubled, and interest payments running at £25 billion a year. We have acted prudently so that there will be balance over the cycle in the current account. Instead of attacking us, the right hon. Gentleman should praise our prudence.
If the right hon. Gentleman says—and he does—that we are going on a spending spree, he had better tell us what he would cut. Would it be the health service, or education? Which public services would the Conservative party cut? Would it be transport, or social security? If the Conservatives think that our public spending figures are wrong, what will they cut?

Mr. Maude: The Chancellor has forgotten that this is Question Time for the Government. I am not attacking the Governor of the Bank of England, who has been put in an impossible position. He told the Treasury Committee that he understood that the Chancellor's plans would make no difference for the next two years. That was not true. The Governor was misled because the Chancellor's expansionary spending plans kick in—he may not know this, but we have spotted it—from April next year.
Is not the truth that inflation is up, strikes are up, savings are down, unemployment claimants are up and manufacturing is in recession? The Chancellor has created boom and bust at the same time. After 17 tax rises in only 15 months, is not the truth that hard-working people are paying an ever higher price to the Treasury's tartan tax army? After the Treasury team's own goal, should not they go home early as well?

Mr. Brown: I said at the beginning that the right hon. Gentleman had been Financial Secretary to the Treasury

from 1990 to 1992. I will not take any lectures from a former Minister who was at the Treasury while interest rates rose to 15 per cent., inflation rose to nearly 10 per cent., public borrowing started its inexorable rise to £50 billion, the national debt started to rise—eventually doubling—and unemployment rose by 1 million people. The right hon. Gentleman should be ashamed of his record at the Treasury. It is no wonder that he was thrown out at the 1992 election.

National Insurance

Ms Joan Ryan: If he will make a statement on the representations he has received on his plans to reform employees' national insurance contributions. [46148]

Shona McIsaac: If he will make a statement on the representations he has received on his plans to reform employees' national insurance contributions. [46152]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gordon Brown): The reforms to employees' national insurance contributions announced in the Budget, together with the introduction of the working families tax credit, have been welcomed by a wide range of individuals and organisations. They will increase the return from working and the incentive to move from welfare to work.

Ms Ryan: I welcome my right hon. Friend's Budget measures on national insurance contributions. Will he outline how he expects them to help my 2,500 constituents in Enfield, North who are, by any definition, low paid, and the 2,375 adults who are registered as unemployed? That is some 5,000 people in my constituency alone who seek assistance from our Government and who got none from the previous one. [Interruption.]

Mr. Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. When the Opposition groan as if they did not support what she said, let us remember that we are reducing national insurance for employees. If the Conservative party is going to oppose that as well, it is an additional problem that it will have with the electorate at the next general election.
Our strategy to help people to move from welfare to work, especially my hon. Friend's constituents, is based first of all on the national minimum wage, which we are introducing from next year. It is supplemented by the working families tax credit, which means that no one working full-time, with a family, will earn less than £180 a week, and they will not pay tax until £220 a week. That is complemented by the rise in child benefit for families, the improvement of child care with the new child care tax credit and the reduction of national insurance that we have achieved. This Government take seriously our contribution to the working poor, and we are doing our determined best to reduce poverty among working families. It is about time the Opposition started supporting us on these things.

Shona McIsaac: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, if we take the changes to national insurance, the working families tax credit and the national minimum wage, for certain people—for example, a lone parent with


one child working 16 hours a week—the effective hourly rate of the national minimum wage will be about £11 per hour? Are my sums correct?

Mr. Brown: Yes, it is possible for a single parent going to work to earn decent wages, and a return from her work that will enable her to bring up her family. That is an important development. [Laughter.] Again, the Conservative party laughs when we are trying to help single parents get back into work. The Conservatives should support measures to deal with unemployment. We can build on these measures by making it possible for more and more people to find opportunities for work.
Through the national child care strategy, there will be child care to back that up. The child care credit means that people above the average wage will be able to claim help with child care so that they do not have to choose between their children and the work that they have to do. They can get proper help with child care. We are the first Government to introduce a national child care strategy, which is to the benefit of thousands of mothers and fathers.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Can the Chancellor clear up a muddle? In his Budget statement, he said that no employee learning less than £81 a week would have to pay national insurance, yet when the Social Security Bill passed through the House, we found that the figure was £64 a week, in line with that in the Red Book. That dashed the hopes of many low-paid people that they would have their national insurance payments cut. They were under a false impression. Can the Chancellor clear this up once and for all?

Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman accuses us of falsehoods about national insurance. We have cut national insurance in a way that the previous Government did not: £1.26 a week for every employee. We also said that future reforms of national insurance will mean that no one will pay national insurance or income tax before £81 a week. When we announced the figures, we published them in the Red Book. The hon. Gentleman rightly attributes to the Red Book the correct information, which was also the information in the Budget speech. Again, the Conservative party should support cuts in national insurance, as they should support what we have done on child benefit and the working families tax credit, but it is impossible to get sense out of the Conservative Opposition.

Mr. John Whittingdale: The published projections of the Chancellor in the Red Book take no account of the effect of the future cut in national insurance contributions for employees earning less than £81 a week. The Chancellor has now told the Treasury Select Committee that that is simply an aspiration. I repeat the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown): when do the Government intend to make the cut, or is that pledge as worthless as Labour's other pledges?

Mr. Brown: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench, a move that was part of the changes in the Conservative Front-Bench team, but he should get his figures accurate. We have cut national insurance from next April, and any impression that the Conservative party

tries to give to the contrary is utterly wrong. We are the party that has made it possible for people in work to have a lower tax rate through a cut in national insurance. Conservative Members should welcome it. As for what the hon. Gentleman says about the intentions of the Government, I refer him to my Budget speech, which is entirely accurate. The information on that is reflected in the Red Book. Instead of griping, the Conservative party should start welcoming the good things that we are doing.

Mr. Bill O'Brien: May I thank my right hon. Friend for the support that he is giving to the constituents of Normanton in the form of help for the low-paid, and people who are in work and still living in poverty? It is commendable. May I put it to him that many of my constituents who rely on the state pension realise that national insurance contributions are for their benefit? What protection is he giving to people who rely on the state pension for their livelihood and quality of life? That is important to many people. Any contribution that my right hon. Friend could make would be most helpful.

Mr. Brown: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend says about his constituency and about the pension. He, like me, represents a constituency that had thousands of jobs in the mining industry and which has looked to the Government to sort out a policy for the coal industry. I am pleased that many hon. Members from mining areas are in the House of Commons today. Our obligations to pensioners are set out in our manifesto, and we shall uphold them.
We started by cutting VAT on fuel to 5 per cent. That helped every pensioner in the country. We abolished the gas levy to cut fuel bills. At the same time, we introduced direct help for winter fuel bills of £20 for every pensioner household in the country and £50 for households on income support. By those measures, taken with the changes in regulation, we have reduced the average pensioner household's fuel bill by about £100. The Government take seriously their obligations to the elderly, and we shall continue to meet all the commitments that we made in our manifesto.

Charities Taxation

Mr. Tim Boswell: When he expects to complete his review of charities taxation.[46149]

Mr. John Bercow: What representations he has received regarding the taxation of charities. [46158]

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Dawn Primarolo): There has been an excellent response to the first phase of the review of charities taxation. We expect to publish a consultation document shortly.

Mr. Boswell: Yes, but, as the Treasury is fond of the long term, will the Financial Secretary concede that hard-pressed charities feel that they will have a long wait to know what will happen to them in the long term? Will she now at last concede that the compensation payments were offered to charities on a degressive basis against the loss of their dividend tax credits, and are a reflection of the damage that the Chancellor's proposals have already inflicted on the income of the charities sector?

Dawn Primarolo: No, I certainly do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. As he well knows, the charities have


been trying to persuade Governments for some time to undertake a comprehensive review of both direct and indirect taxation and the way in which it impacts on their ability to contribute to our society.
The Government have received more than 3,500 responses. It is important that we consider all of them and that the consultation document offers charities the proposals that they are looking for so that they can plan for the long term a system that is simple and easy to operate, and respects their contribution to society. Charities already receive direct and indirect relief of more than £1.8 billion from the Government, and the compensation to which the hon. Gentleman refers was very generous indeed.

Mr. Bercow: The Financial Secretary's reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) will be a grave disappointment to thousands of charities the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Why is the hon. Lady not prepared to commit the Government, when the formal period of transitional relief has come to an end, to the provision of some sort of continuing relief from which charities can benefit? If she is not prepared to make that commitment on the Floor of the House this afternoon, why does she not simply go away and rethink the unwarranted £400 million tax hit on the charities sector introduced by her Government?

Dawn Primarolo: The hon. Gentleman is out of touch with the charitable sector, which has widely welcomed the Government's review of both indirect and direct taxes and how they impact on charities. Far from being gravely disappointed, charities welcome the fact that there is now a Government who recognise the contribution they make to society and who are prepared to make plans with them for the long term.

Mr. John Home Robertson: Will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that some charities are a great deal more charitable than others? As a survivor of the private education system, may I suggest that it is impossible to justify the current scale of tax advantages made available to schools whose main objective is to maintain the class system in this country?

Dawn Primarolo: My hon. Friend is quite right to identify the vast range of charities and charitable activity. What is important is that the review recognises that charities make a contribution, treats them fairly, and provides a tax system that will suit their needs into the next century, instead of one that matches what the previous Government thought their activities should have been in the last century.

Mr. Michael Fallon: Why should charities have to pay more tax to compensate for the Government's failure to control welfare spending? Has the hon. Lady seen the correspondence from the Thalidomide Trust, which has written to her about the £75,000 it lost through the withdrawal of tax credits last year, because Ministers drew up the compensation scheme so narrowly that they excluded the mixed funds in which the trust had invested?

Dawn Primarolo: In case the hon. Gentleman missed the point I made earlier, I shall repeat it: charities received

£1.8 billion of tax relief from the Government. The compensation scheme that was established is generous, and lasts for five years. The hon. Gentleman should turn his mind to ways in which to support the Government in their proposals to provide a secure base for charities, instead of trying to make cheap points at their expense.

Debt Relief

Mr. Andrew Love: What progress he has made in securing international commitment to the Mauritius mandate targets. [46150]

Mr. Patrick Hall: What progress he has made in helping to reduce the burden of debt of the world's most impoverished countries. [46163]

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mrs. Helen Liddell): The Government have made progress on many fronts, as evidenced most recently in the G8 Birmingham summit communiqué, which encouraged all debtor countries to begin the process of securing debt relief by 2000 and looked forward to the speedy and determined implementation of debt relief in more countries under the highly indebted poor countries initiative.

Mr. Love: Real and effective debt relief is essential to countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique to provide them with the opportunity for economic development and social rehabilitation. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the measures promoted by the Government for debt relief will assist those countries in such efforts?

Mrs. Liddell: My hon. Friend makes a perceptive point: debt relief is not enough in itself. It might be a necessary precondition for economic growth and development, but it is essential in the long term that the indebted countries implement policies that will lead to economic growth and development, so that they never again return to the high levels of debt that exert such a drag on their economics and create the conditions in which poverty becomes endemic.

Mr. Hall: I should like to tell my hon. Friend that many people from Bedford and Kempston have told me that they support the Government's commitment to the flexible and speedy implementation of the heavily indebted poor countries initiative—[Interruption.]Unlike some Opposition Members, many people in this country do not find that initiative amusing. Does my hon. Friend agree with those commentators who say that, if only Governments would co-operate more effectively on the initiative, it would be of great benefit to as many as 300 million of the poorest people in the world?

Mrs. Liddell: My hon. Friend makes a very valid point, which contrasts with the mocking remarks of Opposition Members. Up to 20,000 people have written to the Treasury in support of the initiatives that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has taken on the Mauritius mandate. It is critical that there is international co-operation on debt relief, and the United Kingdom Government have already established their leadership in seeking to provide assistance to countries, through not only debt relief but export credit guarantees for the next


two years, which will allow those countries to work their way through productive expenditure to growth and sustainable development.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Mr. Bill Rammell: When he expects to announce the results of the comprehensive spending review. [46151]

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Alistair Darling): As I made clear last June when I announced the comprehensive spending review, its results will be published before the summer recess.

Mr. Rammell: When the outcome of the comprehensive spending review is announced, will particular attention be paid to the need for increased investment in social housing? The first phase of the release of capital receipts brought about a 33 per cent. increase in investment in one year, but my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary will be aware that that must be viewed in the context of a 62 per cent. cut between 1992 and 1997 under the previous Tory Government. In fact, no area of public expenditure was hit as hard as social housing in 18 years of Conservative government. In the light of that, will the Chief Secretary reassure the House that the need for such investment, which affects some of the poorest people in society, will be a high priority for this Government?

Mr. Darling: The previous Government paid little attention to the needs of public sector housing. This Government have arranged for some £900 million of additional investment to be made available for the maintenance, repair and improvement of the public housing stock since the election. It is interesting to note that public sector investment fell from 8 per cent. of national income in the 1960s to 2 per cent. in the 1980s and 0.8 per cent. in the 1990s. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made clear in his statement two weeks ago, we are determined to ensure that the fabric of society will benefit from the level of public sector investment being improved prudently, and housing will be able to share in that benefit.

Mr. Nick Gibb: Clause 1 of Labour's contract with the people says that Labour will cut social security spending and transfer the savings into education. Given the huge planned increase in social security spending, will the Chief Secretary now apologise to the British people for breaching that contract?

Mr. Darling: As the hon. Gentleman ought to be aware, the Government have taken several initiatives to ensure that people get off the dole and back into work. The welfare-to-work programme funded by the windfall tax on the privatised utilities is enabling many young people and long-term unemployed to get off the dole, so that they no longer cost the public money, and into work, where they start to make a contribution for themselves and their families.
The measures that we have taken to introduce the working families tax credit and reform the tax and benefit system will ensure that work pays, and will enable many

more people to work and contribute. The Government have introduced several measures that encourage work and will reduce the number of people who are out of work. That will enable us to redirect resources into the public services that we need.
On education, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we ended the assisted places scheme, which was a classic example of the few benefiting at the expense of the many. We have arranged for that money to be put into the education system to cut class sizes, which will help thousands of young children whom the previous Government neglected.

Mr. Derek Foster: My right hon. Friend will be aware that Labour Members cannot wait for the spending review to hear further good news for education and health. Is he further aware that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's recent far-sighted and shrewd statement on public investment was widely acclaimed in the northern region, because he gave Newcastle airport freedom to invest to underpin its future? I now urge him to go further and give the same full commercial freedom to the Post Office so that it can invest to underpin its global competitiveness.

Mr. Darling: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Government are reviewing the position of the Post Office, as we made clear in our manifesto that we would. He is right to say that Newcastle airport, and Manchester airport, are to be given greater commercial freedom. These are profitable corporations, able to trade without having to rely on public funds. We are determined to make changes to the system so that organisations that can trade profitably and independently are given the commercial freedom that they need.
The Government are certainly committed to increasing investment in health and education. We have already increased the amount available to education by about £2.5 billion since the election, and a further £2 billion has been allocated to the health service. That is all much-needed investment. In the not too distant future, the comprehensive spending review will further set out the Government's spending priorities for the rest of this Parliament and beyond.

Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory: Even before the spending review, the Chancellor has already announced that he has abandoned the tight expenditure policies that he so proudly announced last year. Instead, public expenditure will now rise at the fastest rate since the 1960s—by 2.75 per cent. above inflation every year, and by more if all the fiddles and changed definitions are taken into account.
Does the Chief Secretary agree that this return to tax-and-spend policies will put more pressure on inflation and on the Bank of England to increase interest rates further, thereby pushing the manufacturing and exporting sectors even further into recession? Is the Chief Secretary content to preside over one policy that creates a boom and another that simultaneously creates a bust?

Mr. Darling: The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that a significant fiscal tightening was announced in my right hon. Friend's Budgets of the past two years, and confirmed again in his recent statement. It is a bit rich of


the Tory party to criticise our proposals, when the Conservative Government presided over an economic regime that resulted in interest rates of more than 15 per cent. and inflation of more than 10 per cent.; and when they doubled the national debt in the space of six years, with the result that £25 billion a year is spent servicing that debt when the money could be better spent on public services.

Mr. Francis Maude: Answer the question.

Mr. Darling: Conservative Members do not like being reminded of their legacy, which we have had to clear up.
My right hon. Friend announced that our approach is to ensure stable public finances so that we can increase sustainable spending on public services. We will also ensure that current spending is met by income that we raise, and we will borrow only to invest prudently. That is what the former Government never achieved. We have sorted out the mess that they left us.
I notice that the shadow Chancellor last night addressed the Carlton club political committee and observed not only that taxes are lower in Britain, that corporation tax is down to 30 per cent. and that our long-term interest rates are lower than ever; he also said:
government debt here is likely to be lower than most others.
If he was willing to endorse us last night, he ought to be willing to do so this afternoon.

Dr. George Turner: My right hon. Friend will know that many Labour Members represent rural constituencies because the Tory party neglected their need for financial investment. My part of England is isolated from the national road network and our public transport is the worst imaginable. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the spending review will, for the first time in two decades, take into account the needs of the rural as well as those of the urban economy?

Mr. Darling: My hon. Friend is quite right. For 18 years, the previous Government largely neglected rural areas. It is only in the past few weeks that the Tories have taken an interest in them—which is why so many of their former colleagues find themselves out of work: they were not aware of what the Tory Government were doing to rural areas.
The comprehensive spending review will address those problems. We made a start in the last Budget, recognising some of the problems that people faced with rural transport and the lack of it in many areas. When the Tories start complaining about our prudent spending plans for the next few years, when they accuse of us of going on a spending spree or of having too loose a fiscal policy, they really must tell us, what do they want to cut? Are we spending too much on health, too much on education, too much on transport? They must answer those questions.
The Government are determined to improve education standards in urban and rural areas throughout the country. We want to increase spending on health. We want to ensure that we have a transport system that is fit for this country as we move into the next millennium. The previous Government could never, ever do that, because of their approach to public spending and their incompetence in economic management.

Arms Sales

Mr. David Heath: Under what circumstances he would be advised by Customs and Excise officers of an intention to prosecute for breach of United Nations sanctions, or an Order in Council, on arms sales. [46153]

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Dawn Primarolo): Where prospective prosecutions are important and likely to attract parliamentary, public and media attention, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is advised by customs of intention to prosecute. Such advices are copied to the Chancellor's office.
Advices to Treasury Ministers are for information only—Treasury Ministers have no role in decisions on whether to prosecute a particular case.

Mr. Heath: I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for that reply. I have now discovered six Departments and their Ministers who seem to have a finger in the pie of arms control. Is it any wonder that we have such a muddled situation—why arms get into the hands of quite improper countries and destinations? Is it not time that we had a clearer, more transparent system, which provided for a committee of scrutiny in the House?

Dawn Primarolo: I regret that the hon. Gentleman did not listen to my answer. Treasury Ministers have no role in decisions on whether to prosecute particular cases.

Casinos

Mr. Andrew Dismore: If he will make a statement on the taxation of casinos. [46155]

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Dawn Primarolo): Increases in gaming duty were announced in the March Budget. These changes increase the top rate of duty and reduce the gross gaming yield threshold for each band, raising an additional £20 million in 1998–99 and £25 million in 1999–2000.

Mr. Dismore: Is my hon. Friend aware that, after the Budget announcement on gaming duty, Mr. Alan Goodenough, chief executive of London Clubs International, informed his staff that their pay increases and promotion prospects were under threat, and asked them to write to their Members of Parliament to complain? Is she also aware that, as revealed by the Daily Mirroron 1 June, at the same time Mr. Goodenough was busy awarding himself a 110 per cent. pay increase, taking his earnings to £851,000, and awarding three other directors pay increases of 90 per cent. plus?
Does the Financial Secretary agree that that example of double standards in the casino industry reveals that it can well afford to pay the modest tax increases that she announced? Does she further agree that staff of London Clubs International would be best advised to say to their chief executive that what is good enough for him is good enough for them, and that the directors, instead of awarding themselves fat-cat pay increases, should look after the interests of their staff?

Dawn Primarolo: I am sure that those who heard my hon. Friend's words will draw their own conclusions


about Mr. Goodenough's pay rise. The Government's decisions to increase gaming duty on casinos were based on the fact that the industry could afford to pay more tax, and there is no reason why it should not pay it.

Sir Peter Tapsell: Has it occurred to Treasury Ministers how closely they now resemble the croupiers in a casino themselves, as they have decided to bet on future movements of interest rates when deciding on their fiscal policies?

Dawn Primarolo: I have never been in a casino. The Government base their decisions on taxing that industry on the economic evidence that is available to them. It makes a very comfortable profit, and the tax is totally justified.

Health Service Expenditure

Mr. Simon Hughes: What the implications are of the proposals set out in his oral statement of 11 June 1998, Official Report, columns 1195–201, for expenditure on health services over the next three years. [46157]

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Alistair Darling): Plans for the health services over the next three years will be set out in the comprehensive spending review. As I said a few minutes ago, the results of that review will be published before the summer recess.

Mr. Hughes: I thought that the Chief Secretary might give that answer. May I help him by pointing out that there is some money that does not need to wait for the comprehensive spending review? The economic and fiscal report published by the Chancellor on the day of his announcement a few weeks ago revealed that the underspend for the last financial year was £1.5 billion more than expected. Therefore, there is now sitting in reserve, unallocated for this year, between £1 billion and £2 billion. It would be entirely possible both to meet the pay recommendation in full for all those in the health service, instead of its being phased, and to put an extra £1 billion or more into the NHS this year without using any additional revenue, collecting any more money or waiting until the next financial year. Given that the money is available, why has it not been spent?

Mr. Darling: It is well seen, as one political commentator observed, that the Liberal Democrats have not been near the Treasury for some 80 years. The Liberal Democrats' attitude to public spending is such that, the minute they think they see any money, they believe that it should be spent. They pay no regard to any other claims that might come the Treasury's way during the next financial year.
The fact is that the Government have invested an additional £2 billion in the health service in our first two years in office. Incidentally, the Liberal Democrats promised to invest only £1.1 billion in the first two years, so we have invested in the health service twice as much as the Liberals planned to do. The comprehensive spending review, which will be published shortly, will set out how much the Government believe that they can invest in the health service over the next three years. The most important factor that the Liberals have yet to grasp is that,

unless public spending is built on sustainable foundations and, unless we ensure that we can afford public spending in the future, we shall return to the stop-go funding of public services, under which the health service suffered considerably. The Liberal Democrats know absolutely nothing about that—which is why it is highly likely that it will be at least another 80 years before they have any chance of getting near the Treasury.

Mr. Stephen Dorrell: Can the Chief Secretary confirm that, from 1979 to 1997, Government spending on the national health service grew by an average of 3.1 per cent. more than inflation? Can the Chief Secretary commit the Government at least to matching that growth in the resources available to the health service? Failing that—more modestly—can he, at the very minimum, commit the Government to ensuring that the share of national income dedicated to the national health service is not allowed to fall? Will he commit himself to maintaining the higher share of national income that the previous Government committed to the national health service, over and above the record that we inherited from our predecessors?

Mr. Darling: Since this is a day of welcoming, I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his unaccustomed place in the Chamber. As a former Health Minister, he will know that one of the mistakes that the previous Government made was certainly to spend more money, but to spend it on health service bureaucracy and not on front-line patient care. The Government took the early step of ending the internal market in the health service, which set hospital against hospital and saw an inordinate amount of money spent on red tape. We are now spending that money on front-line patient care.
As a former Treasury Minister, the right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that, because the previous Government mismanaged the economy and misread the economic signals in the late 1980s, in particular, they were not able to ensure that the health service had a sustainable base for future funding. The health service, like every other service, suffered because of the stop-go nature of public spending.
In his statement a week or so ago, my right hon. Friend laid down a clear and stable foundation for all future public spending. The comprehensive spending review—the results of which will be announced shortly—will make abundantly clear the Government's commitment to the health service, in its 50th anniversary year, for the rest of the Parliament. We set up the national health service, and we shall ensure that it carries on into the next century in a way that the people of this country want.

Millennium Compliance

Mr. Nigel Evans: What steps his Department has taken to resolve the millennium bug computer problem. [46159]

The Paymaster General (Mr. Geoffrey Robinson): I can inform the hon. Gentleman that the planned completion date for the Treasury for the year 2000 programme is the end of this year for most IT systems, with the remainder to be completed by the end of March


next year. The overall cost of work is £114,000, which will be funded from existing resources through rescheduling work programmes.

Mr. Evans: Will the Minister confirm that he is the lead Minister in his Department dealing with the millennium bug? Will he say how much of his time is spent each week dealing with the millennium bug problem? How many people in his Department are dealing with the problem full time? Is the right hon. Gentleman happy, following the Audit Commission's report last week, that the Department will be able to meet its time scale?

Mr. Robinson: I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that we shall be able to meet our time scale, unlike the Opposition who, when they were in government, did nothing about the problem. We have a comprehensive range of activities at the Treasury and throughout all central Government Departments. We are committed to ensuring that this very serious problem, in which the hon. Gentleman has an interest and on which he had quite recently an Adjournment debate, is properly handled, which it was not when the Conservative party was in government.

Working Families Tax Credit

Ms Rosie Winterton: What recent representations he has received on his decision to introduce a working families tax credit. [46160]

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Dawn Primarolo): The working families tax credit has been welcomed by a wide range of individuals and organisations.

Ms Winterton: Has my hon. Friend received any representations about the amount of working families tax credit that will be available to 18 to 21-year-olds, who will be on the lower level of the national minimum wage? Will my hon. Friend confirm that anyone with a family who is eligible for the working families tax credit will receive the same overall amount of income whether they are over or under 21?

Dawn Primarolo: I have not received the representations to which my hon. Friend has referred. However, I can confirm to her that every family working full time will have a guaranteed income of at least £180 per week. No family with earnings of less than £220 a week will pay tax. The new child tax credit, which replaces the failed family credit allowance, will be available to all families.

Mr. Ian Bruce: When will this wonderful tax credit come in? If it is so good, why is it not already in?

Dawn Primarolo: It will be introduced in October 1999. It is the democratic process and proper scrutiny by the House that dictate when it will be introduced.

Mr. Steve Webb: Would the Minister accept that part of the reason why the tax and benefit system for the low-paid is a mess is that it developed

piecemeal, with different bits being added at different times rather than a coherent overview being taken? Does the hon. Lady accept that the Government are in danger of making the same mistake again by introducing the working families tax credit without integrating help with housing costs?

Dawn Primarolo: No, I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's proposition. The Government are taking an overview, and are developing a comprehensive system.

Ms Gisela Stuart: How will the self-employed be able to claim the working families tax credit, given that it will be coming through the wage packet?

Dawn Primarolo: The self-employed will be able to apply for the working families tax credit and the child care tax credit in the same way as anyone else. Discussions are taking place now between employers and representative organisations and between the Inland Revenue and those organisations with a view to developing the most appropriate way of delivering this mechanism.

Value Added Tax

Jackie Ballard: What assessment he has made of the gender impact of the range of goods and services which are subject to VAT; and if he will make a statement. [46161]

The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mrs. Helen Liddell): There has been no specific assessment of the impact of VAT on expenditure by gender. However, Treasury officials are looking at how the analysis of Budget measures can be deepened—including by gender.

Jackie Ballard: Does the Minister agree that, for 15 million British women, sanitary products are as an essential part of the family budget as food or clothing? Is the hon. Lady aware that Britain has one of the highest rates in Europe of valued added tax on sanitary protection? Will she therefore respond positively to the 171 Members, many of whom are her hon. Friends, who signed early-day motion 683, and asked the Government to reduce VAT on sanitary protection to the European Union minimum of 5 per cent?

Mrs. Liddell: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point, and I am well aware of the anxiety that exists not only in the House, but in women's groups; it has been well represented in women's magazines. Value added tax is levied on a wide range of other essential health and hygiene products that affect men or women, or both, and they have to pay VAT. The history of VAT on those products dates back to 1977, and there has been a debate about the matter. At the moment, there is no proposal to reduce VAT on sanitary products.

Cross-border Shopping

Mr. Peter Atkinson: If he will make a statement on progress with the review of cross-border shopping and smuggling of alcohol and tobacco announced in his Budget of July 1997. [46162]

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Dawn Primarolo): My ministerial colleagues and I have seen and studied the review report, and value greatly the input by members of the trade in particular. However, in view of the possible public spending implications, the Government will announce their proposals as part of the outcome of the comprehensive spending review later in the year.

Mr. Atkinson: While the report has been gathering dust on the Minister's desk for the past six months, small retailers have been going out of business and criminals have been getting richer. The north-east of England is the bootlegging centre of Britain, and Kent police estimate that more than 1,000 north-easterners are involved in smuggling of one form or another. It is fuelling criminal activity throughout the region. Will she act, and publish the report to bring the problem out into the open?

Dawn Primarolo: I should remind the hon. Gentleman that the Conservative Government did not take any action on this issue. On revenue lost through the smuggling of beer, for example, the Government lose £120 million a year against £3 billion in revenue collected. It is a bit rich for the hon. Gentleman to accuse the Government of not taking any measures to counter smuggling when we have announced tougher prosecution policies, substantially increased the charges for returning vehicles and made it absolutely clear that any legitimate business that participates in the trade will have severe sanctions taken against it. We have repeatedly told hon. Members that smuggling is a criminal activity, that Customs and Excise is increasing its activities to prevent smuggling, and that they should all make it clear that smugglers, are taking money out of the back pockets of our schools, our hospitals and our public services.

Dr. Stephen Ladyman: May I bring to my hon. Friend's attention The Pipe Shop in Sandwich in my constituency, which is one of many businesses in east Kent that will be driven out of business by the resale of goods bought duty paid in France if we do not do something to curb that trade? Does she agree that, at no cost to the Treasury, customs officers could be allowed to reject the claim that people are bringing goods into the country for family or friends? People should be allowed a personal allowance set at a level appropriate for a normal person's consumption in three months, rather than at a level appropriate for the consumption of a chain-smoking dipsomaniac over 12 months.

Dawn Primarolo: The limits to which my hon. Friend refers are those to which the previous Government committed us in terms of the legitimate amount of

produce that members of the public could bring into this country. That is non-negotiable, and the Government are not able to reopen it. It is a shame that Conservative Members did not think a little more carefully when they agreed those limits. My hon. Friend has made an important point which the Government bear in mind and pursue actively; however, we must not only prevent smuggling, but prevent the legitimate trade from being undermined by such activity. All hon. Members would want to join us in that.

Taxation

Miss Julie Kirkbride: How many representations he has received regarding his forecasts for the tax burden. [46165]

Mr. Richard Spring: If he will make a statement on his Department's forecast for the future tax burden. [46167]

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Alistair Darling): The Chancellor receives many representations on issues relating to taxation. The tax to gross domestic product ratio is projected to be constant over the next two years.

Miss Kirkbride: I thank the Minister for that answer, but is he now prepared to come clean about the true state of the public finances? The working families tax credit will not be properly accounted for in inflationary revenue and spending statistics. Rather than being a public spending commitment, it will be regarded as a tax forgone, and therefore will not be truly affected by public expenditure.

Mr. Darling: The hon. Lady has misunderstood the position. The way in which we account for the working families tax credit is laid down by international accounting standards, by which this Government, like all Governments, abide.

Mr. Spring: Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the burden on the average family of tax and mortgage increases now amounts to some £1,000? How does he reconcile that with the disgracefully misleading statements about tax before the general election?

Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman will no doubt recall that he supported the previous Government, who imposed 22 tax rises in complete contradiction to everything that they had said at the election. I remind him of two central facts. Measured in whichever way one likes, taxes are lower in Britain than in continental Europe. Corporation tax in the United Kingdom is 30 per cent.—[Interruption.] It is all very well for Opposition Members to get upset about that, but I was not the first to say it. The shadow Chancellor said it last night at the Carlton club. If the shadow Chancellor knows that taxes are lower in Britain than elsewhere in Europe, it should be good enough for Conservative Back Benchers.

Energy Review

The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): With permission, Madam Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the Government's review of energy sources for power generation and the preliminary conclusions on which I am now consulting.
The review was set up following the crisis in the coal industry last autumn, amid claims that the electricity market was rigged against coal. In response, the Government set up a wide-ranging review of electricity generation. The review has looked widely at the issues, with the assistance of independent consultants, about 150 outside representations, and meetings with some 40 parties. It has confirmed that there are, indeed, serious distortions in the electricity market. As a result, prices have been higher than they should have been. New gas stations have entered the market, benefiting from those high prices, displaced coal and failed to bring prices down for consumers. Without action to address those distortions, prices for consumers will continue to be higher than necessary, and diversity and security of supply will suffer.
Some have pressed the Government to go further and guarantee a specific share of the electricity market for UK deep-mined coal. The Government have given careful consideration to those and all other proposals. We do not, however, believe that to identify a defined share of the market, regardless of other considerations, would be the right course to take. Our aim is to put all fuels on a level playing field, and not to give priority to any one. We do not propose to subsidise any part of the UK coal industry. Coal producers themselves have asked for fairness, not favours.
I must therefore make it clear, against a background of speculation in the press, that there is no deal with the generators by which the Government have offered to introduce new policies in return for the generators buying British coal. Nor are the Government's policy conclusions in any way conditional on their doing so. That, and the fact that coal purchase decisions are a matter for them, has been made clear to the generators.
I have asked the advice of the Director General of Electricity Supply, and his views are set out in our consultation document. He has identified significant problems both in the electricity pool and in the market structure. Those, and the high prices arising in the market, have been among the factors encouraging the growth of gas in electricity generation at the expense of coal. He has advised me that action is needed to reform the trading arrangements so that all plant plays a full role in competition, and to address the market power of the major generators. He also sees new entry as important. We agree with him that reform of the market is needed.
The review has confirmed that the main objective of our energy policy should be secure, diverse and sustainable supplies of energy at competitive prices. That includes our concern to achieve environmental improvements. Taking account of the advice we have received from the DGES, we intend to achieve that objective by creating a competitive electricity market, founded on diverse fuel sources, providing secure supplies and, into the bargain, delivering significantly lower electricity prices to customers.
The Government are therefore making the following proposals to remedy the market distortions. We shall promote competition by reform of the wholesale electricity trading arrangements, and by pressing forward with competition in electricity supply. We shall seek practical opportunities for divestment of coal-fired plant by the major generators. We shall establish separate licensing of distribution and supply, and ensure fair trade in electricity with our European partners. We shall ensure that all generators are fairly remunerated for the services they provide to the grid. Taken together, those measures should remove the current distortions, which work against coal.
Market distortions disadvantage consumers, but they also have an impact on fuel use. That could put our energy policy at risk from both high prices and the loss of diversity and security that the squeezing out of coal and the consequent loss of coal-fired power stations would produce. Projections by our independent consultants, based on the current operation of the market, suggest that gas-fired generation could rise sharply, accounting for over 75 per cent. of our electricity within 20 years. In our view, a properly functioning market could well produce a different result.
There are also technical issues that arise from the growing use of gas on the grid. Our independent electrical engineering consultants report that the present arrangements have failed to resolve them. The DGES has said that better arrangements are needed. We propose to take that matter forward.
There is a wide reform agenda to pursue. That will take time; our aim is that, once it is achieved, the market will operate in a fully competitive way. However, the risk is that, before market reform is complete, fuel choices will be distorted, and diversity and security of supply will suffer. Therefore, during this period, we propose to apply a stricter energy policy to power station consents. In fact, significant market entry is still likely. Additional gas-fired power stations in various stages of development, equal to about 10 per cent. of system capacity and owned by competitors of the major generators, need no further authorisation.
Although the DGES has reservations about restrictions on consents, he recognises the Government's responsibility for energy policy, including diversity issues. In my view, it is of primary importance to avoid the pre-emptive destruction of our scope for diversity and security while reforms are yet to feed through.
The new consents policy will be in place only while our reform agenda is being addressed. I have asked the DGES to keep me informed of progress in dealing with the competition issues. I would expect the new consents policy to be relaxed when, on the basis of his advice, we conclude that our reforms have been undertaken and the distortions removed.
I turn now to the details of the proposed policy. We propose to approach new and pending applications for consent under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 on the basis that new natural gas-fired generation would normally be inconsistent with our energy policy concerns about diversity and security.
However, combined heat and power projects have environmental and other benefits that may outweigh those concerns. They will do so if the project is properly sized to meet on-site or nearby heat and electricity requirements


and to deliver high efficiency, although each case will be examined on its merits. It will be especially important that the relevant heat and electricity uses are clearly identified.
Other applications likely to support our environmental objectives without compromising energy security or diversity should be consistent with the Government's energy policy aims. They are likely to include renewable energy projects, including energy from waste, in support of the Government's intention to launch a strong drive on renewables, proposals using clean coal technology and the fitting of flue gas desulphurisation equipment.
We shall take the same energy policy approach when considering existing and new notifications under section 14(1) of the Energy Act 1976 relating to the construction of gas-fired power stations. That will apply whether or not consent has been given under the Electricity Act. The consultation document gives further details of our proposals, including those on notifications under section 14(2) of the Energy Act 1976, dual-firing power stations and black start units.
Decisions on individual applications for consents under section 36 of the Electricity Act and notifications under section 14 of the Energy Act will take into account all the circumstances of the particular case. In particular, in applying the new policy to cases that are already before me, I would take care to weigh carefully the impact on the interests of the promoters against the wider public interest.
The policy that I am proposing today should lead to substantially lower electricity prices by promoting genuine competition and efficiency. It will also safeguard diversity and security while we, with the regulator, press on with making the market work. There have been suggestions that, in the absence of restrictions, real falls in wholesale electricity prices of at least 10 per cent. should be possible in the medium term. My hope and expectation are that prices will in fact fall under our proposed policy by even more than that. While the new consents policy is in place, I have asked the DGES to continue to monitor electricity prices and alert me to any further concerns he may have.
As I have said, coal purchase decisions are a matter for the generators. However, if UK coal—including Scottish and Welsh coal—can be competitive on price and other terms of supply, I see no reason why it cannot have a very positive future in the electricity generation market. Achieving that success is a matter for the management and work force of coal producers.
Decisions on any pit closures would also be a matter for coal producers. However, in the event of any closures taking place, the Government are firmly committed to taking early action to put effective regeneration programmes in place. Consideration will be given to establishing a regeneration fund to help affected communities.
My right hon. Friends are reviewing separately the planning policies for opencast coal developments in England, Scotland and Wales in the light of the pre-election 10-point plan, environmental and local concerns and relevant conclusions of this review. They expect to announce proposals following the final outcome of that review.
Safeguarding the environment is a priority for the Government. Sulphur dioxide emissions from the major electricity generators in England and Wales are already programmed to fall to 365 kilotonnes in 2005. That target,

and significant interim reductions, must be achieved. We believe that coal-fired generators should take all reasonable steps to run their plant with flue gas desulphurisation more than their plant without it, and major coal-fired generators should be encouraged to have at least one FGD-equipped plant.
Against that background, the Environment Agency will be discussing with generators its proposals for revision of emission limits. We expect those discussions to encompass the implications of this announcement, such as for the likely lifetime and usage of coal-fired power stations and policy on flue gas desulphurisation.
On climate change, the Government remain committed to achieving our targets. Our policy remains consistent with a decline in carbon emissions from the electricity generating industry. We shall be consulting this summer on meeting our legally binding Kyoto target of a 12·5 per cent. cut in greenhouse gas emissions, and on how we can move beyond that towards our own aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent. by 2010.
The proposals that I have made today are open for consultation until Monday 20 July, and we intend to announce our conclusions shortly thereafter. Until then, I propose to defer decisions on power station consents and notifications. Where decisions are necessary and should not be deferred, I propose to apply the proposals announced today, subject to the circumstances of each particular case. A consultation document, with full details of our proposals, has been published today. Copies have been placed in the Vote Office.

Mr. John Redwood: I thank the President of the Board of Trade for that statement. We learn that the Government have laboured for a whole year to bring forward an energy policy. Today, they have brought forward a few more soundbites and another round of consultation. We were promised an elephant of a policy, and we have been offered a mouse. Over the past year, they have given us hot air. Today, it is more soothing oil than solid coal or cleaner gas. [Interruption.] Labour Members should not leave the Chamber now, but stay and listen. They know that we have been given no substance or policy, and that it is the mining jobs in their constituencies which are at risk.
In opposition, Labour said that it would save mining jobs with a radical plan for coal. In government, it embarked on the opposite policy—licensing gas power stations; announcing tougher environmental targets; and failing to step up clean coal technology. The Government soon faced the predictable large-scale pit closures and lost mining jobs. So they panicked, and went out to consultation.
The Opposition welcome the pool price review. I suggested such a review months ago. Why has it taken so long to come to conclusions? When will the Government make some decisions about that vital matter? Will they find a way that is fair not only to coal but to gas? How many mining jobs will go regardless?
The Government's proposals are not so much a U-turn as a skid and a spin. How long will it be before clean coal technology is used at more coal power stations? What is the future of the gas industry—which was expanding fast and doing well before the moratorium was imposed? Why is there no statement on the future of the nuclear industry, particularly in the wake of the report by the


Select Committee on Trade and Industry? We have heard a statement from the President which—by trying to face all ways at once—merely creates more confusion.
The Government's energy and environmental policies remain at loggerheads. The Prime Minister pledged the United Kingdom to tougher targets than the challenging ones that the previous Government had set and left in place. To hit them means burning less coal—a lot less coal—and turning to cleaner ways of generating power. Now the President wants us to believe that she will save some of the mining jobs that her own Government were threatening. That means that they will fail to hit their very own environmental targets.
It is no good the President replying that dirtier electricity will mean fewer cars on the road, because the Deputy Prime Minister is briefing to say that he will not be stopping us driving. Nor—I hope—will they force granny to turn down the central heating. Therefore, the Government must do something about power generation.
It has taken so long to produce such a sketchy policy because the Government have been at war over what to do. Those who wish to subsidise mining jobs have clearly been defeated. The Energy Minister has been sidelined once again. The Treasury has intervened liberally, and the President has been left with the unenviable task of playing across the line of the spin from No. 10 Downing street. Cricketers will know what happens next: the batsman gets caught out.
Ministers say different things to different audiences, to get through difficult days. They seem more interested in saving their own jobs than other people's.
Will the President today admit that, on this policy, the UK cannot hit its environmental targets, and that those targets will have to be changed? Will she promise to return to the House when she has made up her mind on all the issues that are so notably missing from the statement? The Government will have to understand that, by trying to be all things to all men, one ends up satisfying no one and closing a lot of pits.

Mrs. Beckett: The right hon. Gentleman talked about saving mining jobs. In December 1980, a total of 230,000 people were employed in Britain's coal mines; today, there are 12,000. We do not need any lessons from him about what can happen to mining jobs.
The right hon. Gentleman also said that he suggested the review months ago. He spent his first few months as Opposition spokesman complaining that the Government were reviewing too many things, and attacking us for proposing to review any more.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the time scale on clean coal and renewables. Contrary to what he said, the Government have already increased investment in renewables. I am sure that he will be gratified to learn that we already have an application to build a suitable station, which we shall, of course, be considering with great interest.
The right hon. Gentleman seemed to be torn between wanting to know the future of the coal industry and wanting to know the future of the gas industry. On the future of both industries, we shall unrig the market that the Conservative party left rigged, so that both industries can fairly compete against each other.
Why nothing about nuclear power? Nuclear power currently is not economic—as I think even the right hon. Gentleman will accept—and the Government have no plans to proceed down that route. He further asserts that the Government set tougher targets for the environment. He has alleged that that is behind the problems, and that those targets cannot be hit. He is wrong again; they can be hit.
Finally, I note the right hon. Member's observations about various of my right hon. and hon. Friends, who have played an extremely important, worthwhile and supportive role throughout Government, ironing out the implications of those policy issues for a variety of Departments. The right hon. Gentleman seems incapable of taking on board the fact that Government colleagues can co-operate in that way. No doubt, that says more about the record of the Conservative Government than this one.

Mr. Martin O'Neill: I thank the President for her statement. This is a complex issue, as my colleagues on the Select Committee on Trade and Industry and I found when we started looking into the energy industry. We recognised that it will involve not only Government policy but a degree of consensus throughout the various parts of the industry. Therefore, it is essential that the proposals should be put out for extended consultation. Does she also agree that the problem is not so much one of the existing owners of power stations not buying coal, but of getting people into ownership who are prepared to buy it? Therein lies the strength of the proposal for a divestment of ownership of some of the stations.
Secondly, does my right hon. Friend accept that many of us will welcome the flexible approach that she is prepared to take towards the moratorium? The blunt instrument that has been wielded for the past six months has not won any friends anywhere in the energy business. Those who want instant action today should not forget that coal is never bought in substantial amounts between June and September, and that there is time to get a proper deal to put the energy market on a proper footing so that the long-term security of miners' jobs can be guaranteed.

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks and for the important work of the Committee that he chairs. He is entirely right to say that it takes time to thrash out those issues. As he will have seen, we have allowed a further period of consultation so that people can take account of the Government's proposals. Of course, many people have already given us the benefit of their views during the review that has already been undertaken.
I am also grateful to my hon. Friend for what he said about divestment and the flexible approach to a stricter deferment policy on gas consents. The Government believe that all that offers a constructive way forward, and I appreciate his observations.

Mr. Andrew Stunell: May I thank the right hon. Lady for making the statement and for many of the things in it, although I must say something about those that, unfortunately, are not? We welcome the restraint on generation capacity and the removal of price distortion, although we will be interested to see precisely how that is to be achieved. Also, we welcome the reprieve for combined heat and power schemes, and the more flexible approach for the future.


There were many sweet words in a rather long statement, but not too much action. For instance, there is still no clear overall energy policy for the nation or the Government. When can we expect that? There is no clear support for declining coalfield communities, which must clearly face substantial economic problems in the next five years as a result of the statement. No clear help is set out for renewables, there are no proposals on fuel efficiency or energy conservation, and what of the subsidiary issues, such as opencast mining? There were many unanswered questions in a long statement, and I hope that the right hon. Lady can provide some supplementary information now.

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for welcoming some issues, although slightly surprised that, having welcomed a number of proposals, he said that there was nothing in the statement—he managed to find at least three things. He suggested that there was no clear overall policy. I said repeatedly throughout the statement that Government policy is to obtain diverse, secure and sustainable energy supplies at competitive prices. That is very much our underlying approach.
The hon. Gentleman asked me to say more about the detail of coal communities support. I do not share the view that he seems to take about the extent to which such support is likely to be needed, but he will appreciate that, if a regeneration scheme in the coalfields is required, that would be a matter for my colleagues at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. It is not a matter to which I would be referring today.
The hon. Gentleman also asked me about proposals for, among other things, fuel efficiency. Again, those issues are addressed elsewhere, but we have issued proposals on such matters in, for example, our Green Paper on utility regulation. As I said, we are increasing support for renewables.

Mr. Tony Benn: In hoping that the President will disregard the totally hypocritical comments of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), whose party consciously, deliberately and politically destroyed the coal industry throughout its period of government; and in thanking her for providing some alleviation to the short-term crisis afflicting the industry may I ask whether she recognises that any serious, long-term energy policy for Britain must take account of the fact that there is 1,000 years of coal under our territory, which is mined by some of the most highly skilled engineers in the world? It must also take account of the fact that nuclear power is much more expensive than coal, that opencast coal mining inflicts terrible environmental damage on mining areas—where people lose their jobs and their environment—and that up to 40,000 jobs in the mining manufacturing industry could be endangered if the domestic mining industry is allowed to collapse. Does she recognise that competitiveness, level playing fields and market forces are not the basis on which a nation can preserve its long-term policy, as the oil crisis of 1973 should have taught us all?

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his recognition of the ludicrous attitude of the Conservative party. He talks about a serious, long-term policy, the coal reserves that may be available and his concern about the mining manufacturing industry, and I

completely understand that those issues arise. However, I do not share his view that the serious, long-term and sustainable energy policy that we have outlined today will not leave a place for coal. We inherited a market in which coal had no future—that was, indeed, a measure of the Conservative party's hypocrisy—but, in these proposals, the Government are creating the space within which the coal industry has a chance to make its case.

Mr. William Cash: Does the President recall that a few Conservative Members, including me, voted against the pit closure programme, and that, shortly after the general election, I had an Adjournment debate which, some may reasonably say, stimulated discussion on this subject?
I congratulate the Government on their intentions as set out in the review, but I deeply regret the fact that no decisions have yet been taken. The right hon. Lady speaks about competition and a fair deal, but what specific action will the Government take to deal with the disgraceful distortion whereby, in the context of European coal, the German coal mining industry receives £5 billion a year in subsidy, but there is no equivalent redress for the British coal mining industry? I congratulate the Government on their intentions, but the review is very short on specifics.

Mrs. Beckett: I remember and respect the hon. Gentleman's stance on the previous Government's proposals, which resulted in so many pit closures. However, I say—with respect—that, if he had taken his opposition further and opposed some of the other actions of the Conservative Government, he might not have needed to oppose those closures. The previous Government's programme did nothing to redress the distortions in the marketplace on which we are taking action. Today's proposals, our review and the pressure we are applying over subsidies in the European Union—on which we share the view of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), and on which my hon. Friend the Minister for Science, Energy and Industry has again been in touch with the Commission today—are issues on which the Government have taken a stance, unlike the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. We believe that our actions will create the fair market for coal that did not exist under the Conservative party.

Mr. Michael Clapham: Will my right hon. Friend take no notice of the comments by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood)? He is a classic case of Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, because he did one thing and says another. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, during the period when the discussion document is out for consultation, she will apply the provisions of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 to protect men in the industry?

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. I am not altogether sure I can even say cognitive dissonance without thinking hard. I recognise the importance of his point, but he will realise that TUPE conditions are a matter for the industry.

Mr. Peter Atkinson: I heard the Minister for Science, Energy and Industry announce the Government's policy on the radio this morning, and I have listened to


the President expand on the details. However, I must confess that I am none the wiser about what the statement was all about. As I understand it, the President will restrict development of gas-fired power generation, albeit on a temporary basis, and will allow coal-fired generators to purchase as much coal as they like, wherever they like and at whatever price.
To compete, however, the generators will have to buy coal at world prices. There is an awful lot of coal in the far east at the moment, and to get British coal prices down to world price levels, we would need more opencast-mined coal that we could blend with deep-mined coal. Yet the President says that there will be a further restriction on opencast mining, which makes no sense under the logic of what she is proposing. She must explain more fully for the benefit of the miners in my constituency exactly what she is proposing to do.

Mrs. Beckett: One thing is clear from what the hon. Gentleman has said: he has not understood the degree to which we inherited a market rigged by the incompetence of his party. Currently, gas and nuclear power have privileged access to the market. Coal was simply not able to compete fairly, and that is the source of the coal industry's difficulties. There are competition issues which the coal industry itself must address, but contracts have been signed for British coal in recent months, and it is clearly possible for UK coal to be competitive. That was not possible in a market that was deliberately rigged against the coal industry by the Conservative party.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the President aware that pit closures in areas of high unemployment would be a dangerous step, now that unemployment is possibly beginning to rise? Will she assure me that there will be no pit closures until proper conclusions have been reached from the holding review? Will she take into account necessary measures such as cutting imports, opencast mining and the French electricity link? If those actions cannot do the job, will she remember that our coalfield area is tiny, containing only 20 large pits at the most after the disastrous Tory years? There is, of course, one easy way to ensure the industry's stability, and that is to take it back into public ownership.

Mrs. Beckett: I know that that is, and always has been, my hon. Friend's view, but he knows that it is not the Government's policy. He asked about potential pit closures. His expertise on the subject is such that he knows that I cannot give that assurance. Apart from anything else, matters of geology can arise at any time. I cannot give the assurance that he seeks, but I can say that I do not anticipate that we will, in the aftermath of today's statement, see anything other than a coal industry that is able to find its competitive feet and to make its way fairly in the marketplace. He knows that that is what the industry has sought.
My hon. Friend asked for a statement on opencast mining. He knows that that is a matter for my colleagues in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. They will make a statement when the further review that I announced today is concluded in a few weeks. He also mentioned the French interconnector. I assure him that, just as we are continuing to press the

issue of subsidies elsewhere in the European Union, we are considering how we can tackle this issue. We hope that the electricity liberalisation directive will offer an opportunity for coal-generated electricity when it is in place.

Mr. John Gummer: I am sure that the right hon. Lady knows that her statement will have been received with disbelief by the environmental community. Can she explain who among the plethora of advisers and specialist consultants were her environmental consultants? How much extra CO2 will go into the atmosphere as a result of her policies? In what specific ways is she going to reduce CO2 elsewhere? How is she going to produce a 20 per cent. cut in CO2 when every Government policy has increased emissions, despite what they have said?

Mrs. Beckett: The Government are absolutely clear that what we are announcing today is consistent with the targets that we have set. The right hon. Gentleman himself has a contradiction to sort out. I understand that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has said that the reason why coal mining jobs are at risk is because we have tightened environmental targets more than the Conservatives would have done. I suggest that they come back when they have sorted out their difficulties.

Mr. Joe Ashton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, at the two pits in my constituency, Welbeck and Harworth, the miners have made fantastic increases in productivity of up to 250 per cent. in the past few years, but still find their jobs in jeopardy? The harder they work, the more it seems that the EC imposes restrictions on their industry and favours cheap imports from north Africa and Russia. Why should the Germans be able to subsidise their coal and the French dump on us? Why should our miners always have to face supposedly fair competition that actually works against them? Can she not stop opencast mining, which destroys the environment? Can she set at rest the minds of miners now that the extra redundancy pay period has expired? If their jobs are going because of EC decisions, we should restore the redundancy pay that they were getting only a few years ago.

Mrs. Beckett: I respect my hon. Friend's long-standing expertise on this matter. We are continuing to press on subsidies, whether in Germany or elsewhere in the European Union, and on the French interconnector. A statement on opencast mining will be made later. He knows as well as anyone in the House that there are circumstances in which some opencast coal is needed to sweeten the use of deep-mined coal. It is not an altogether straightforward issue. I have taken on board his point about the miners in his constituency continuing to deliver higher productivity but still finding their jobs at risk. The simple reason, as he well understands, is that the market left by the Conservative party was deliberately rigged against them. It will not be in future.

Mr. John Butterfill: The right hon. Lady says that she will conduct a price review. She knows that the problem is the structure of the pool and how it operates, and that gas is much more appropriate for interruptible supply than for base load, where it is largely used now. How will we deal with that problem?


She also said that she wants diversity and security of supply, and that she will reduce emissions by 2010, by which time virtually all, if not all, of the Magnox stations will have closed. They do not produce any emissions at all. How does she intend to replace those stations if, as she has said today, she does not propose to take any initiatives on new nuclear stations?

Mrs. Beckett: The hon. Gentleman is entirely right about the structure of the pool. That has been the nature and source of the problem, although I do not recall his saying so when his party was in government, but never mind.

Mr. Butterfill: Yes, I did.

Mrs. Beckett: He did. In that case, I take that back. I beg his pardon.
We are very well aware that the structure of the pool is the difficulty. That is the issue which we intend to tackle. One of the things that the hon. Gentleman will find when he has a chance to study the consultative document—I recognise that he cannot have done so yet—is that there are a number of issues surrounding the use of gas. He is right to say that it gives a more readily interruptible supply, but there are a number of issues related precisely to diversity and security of supply, and technical issues related to the way in which the market operates at present as a result of the operation of far more gas-powered stations, where there used to be a greater role for coal. The Government have received preliminary reports from consultants, and we shall continue to consider the issues.

Yvette Cooper: The 1,200 miners and 33,000 electricity customers in my constituency will have a strong interest in my right hon. Friend's statement today. I welcome her recognition that the Conservatives did not merely shut pits but outrageously rigged the market against the coal from the pits that were left. Will she give an assurance that the pool will be radically restructured? It lies at the heart of many of our problems with coal. What does my right hon. Friend believe would have happened to the coal industry if we had continued with the policy of the previous Government?

Mrs. Beckett: Of course I recognise the importance of the mining industry to my hon. Friend's constituency and the wider concerns of her constituents. She is right about the rigged market. I certainly assure her that it is very much the Government's intention that the pool review will produce proposals that allow for radical restructuring. She will probably recall that we announced the pool review as long ago as October, if my memory is correct. It is our intention that it should proceed.
My hon. Friend asked what would have happened to the coal industry had the Conservative party remained in power. There is no doubt about it. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has made the point that the Conservatives would have taken a different attitude to some of these issues, but none of us has any doubt that, had the policy that the Conservatives left in place continued to operate, the coal industry in Britain would have simply disappeared. I doubt whether more than one or two Conservative Members would have cared tuppence.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: In welcoming the right hon. Lady's statement and recognising that there has

to be considered examination of the consultation document, may I ask what overall assessment has been made of the impact on employment? Reports are circulating in the Scottish press that the proposals could cause the loss of several hundred jobs in the gas industry in Scotland and beyond. Does the right hon. Lady believe that she has produced a sustainable policy that will reduce dependency on the nuclear industry?

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her recognition. These are complex issues, and the impact on employment is not easy to assess. I am aware of some of the stories in the Scottish press. To be honest, we find it rather hard to understand the basis for them. It is not our expectation that those stories will prove to be soundly based. On the overall aspects of energy policy, it is the Government's intention to pursue diverse, secure and sustainable sources of electricity at competitive prices. Within that, there is a role for a variety of sources. That, we believe, could be one of the strengths of energy policy as a whole.

Mr. Kevin Barron: May I tell my right hon. Friend how much I welcome her statement, which is the first bit of good news the deep-mined coal industry in this country has had for more than a decade? Does she agree that nobody on the Labour Benches argued that the coal industry ought to be subsidised? We said that it ought to have a fair chance—a level playing field in a market that had been rigged by the Conservatives when they were in office.
I am sure that many people in coal mining communities will thank my right hon. Friend and other members of the Government, who have been working for many months to give a bit of pride and honesty back to those communities. I am sure that they will deliver a sustainable deep-mined coal industry for many years to come, from which all the people of this country will benefit, not least electricity consumers, who will derive immediate benefit from the decisions that my right hon. Friend is taking.

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The proposals in the review stem deliberately from our proposals for energy supply, but he is right to say that they will also have a beneficial effect in creating, for the first time in many years, a reasonable and fair market for coal. I am grateful for his recognition of that. As he reminded us, it is ironic that, because of their desperate efforts to rig the market against coal no matter what the cost, the Conservatives left us in a position where all customers—every family and every industrial consumer in this country—have been paying a higher price for electricity than they need to. That was the price of rigging the market against coal.

Mr. Eric Forth: What estimate has the Secretary of State made of the adverse environmental impact of her regime for coal-fired power stations? In giving that estimate, can she tell us how she proposes to meet the Kyoto targets, given the effect that coal-fired power stations will have; and in which areas other compensating reductions will take place?

Mrs. Beckett: The right hon. Gentleman cannot have been paying attention to recent statements by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. I assure him that


we have looked carefully at the issue and that we are clear that there is nothing in my statement that will prevent the Government from reaching the targets we have set ourselves—which are, of course, rather firmer targets than those set by the Conservatives.

Mr. Paddy Tipping: Will my right hon. Friend accept that her statement will be widely welcomed in coalfield communities, because it provides a framework that gives to coal fairness but no favours? Will not her announcements on the review of the pool and on tighter consent for gas stations give the opportunity for both coal producers and generators to come to new contract arrangements? Although that is a matter for them, is it not possible that a contract for, say, 25 million tonnes might be achievable? If that were achieved, there could be no question of any pit closures or job losses.

Mrs. Beckett: I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned long and hard on this issue, and that, with the Coalfield Communities Campaign, he has always argued for fairness rather than favours. He has recognised the impact of the proposals announced today.
My hon. Friend asked me whether there are specific tonnage implications in the statement, but he also said, correctly, that the contracts to be made between generators and coal producers are a matter for them, so he will understand why it is for them and not for us to come to that judgment. All I can say is that I am in no doubt at all that the proposals we have announced today and the way in which we are unrigging the market, which was biased against coal, give a real space for coal in this country, which has not been present for many years.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Having represented a coal mining area in local government some years ago, I have long had a loyalty to the industry and those wonderful men who work in it. Having said that, and appreciating its long-term role in energy in this country—picking up the point made by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), who said that there is 1,000 years of indigenous energy sourcing under our very earth—may I ask what specific measures the right hon. Lady has announced this afternoon to give the mining industry confidence that there will not be further coal mine closures and redundancies in an industry which I believe is of essential importance to this country? I was one of the few Conservative Members who voted against the decimation of the industry by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine).

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments about the coal industry and those who work in it. I hope that I will not harm his career by saying that I recognise his loyalty not only to that industry but to British manufacturing.

Mr. Winterton: It is too late.

Mrs. Beckett: That may be true.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether we believe that today's statement will create confidence in the mining industry. 1 believe that it will. I remind him that, as several

of my hon. Friends have pointed out, the industry has not asked for subsidy. It has asked for a fair, unrigged marketplace within which it can compete. That is what we are delivering in the statement. That, and the understanding that we shall remove the bias against the industry—against which it has fought, although, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, many Conservative Members denied that it existed—is doing more to create confidence than anything else that we could do.

Caroline Flint: I very much welcome the statement, and I am sure that the miners at Rossington pit in my constituency will also welcome it. We now have a Government who say that there is a future for coal.
Will my right hon. Friend's Department promote the image of the new coal mines in this country? During the past year, there has been a portrayal of an old industry with old skills, and new industries such as gas have been promoted against that. The pit in my constituency has some of the finest technology and engineering skills in the world which are not only used to produce coal in this country, but are marketable abroad where they create jobs for British people. I hope that her Department will ensure that that image of coal is conveyed, rather than the images of the past.

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely right, and I welcome her words. As she says, coal is in many senses a new industry, as is mining support. There are technologies of the future for which there is a potential substantial market elsewhere in the world. We would have been unable to take advantage of that if we had followed the policies pursued by the Conservative party and allowed our own industry to disappear. I entirely accept my hon. Friend's point that the industry has a future in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and I shall bear it in mind.

Mr. Michael Jack: The President may be aware that, in my constituency, British Nuclear Fuels plc manufactures all the fuel for Britain's nuclear power stations and operates the Magnox stations that provide electricity at the lowest marginal cost. Her statement was silent on the effect of her proposals on the nuclear industry. Many of my constituents would like to know what estimate she has made or received about the impact of her proposals on the market for nuclear-generated electricity.

Mrs. Beckett: Our proposals are for competition in the market that is fair between nuclear and other fuels, so there was no need for further comment on that. We inherited a market that was rigged against coal. Steps to advantage the nuclear industry have already been taken. This is not the first action that the Government have taken on the energy market; we have taken a series of actions since we came to power, and my statement does not change the basic position of the nuclear industry.

Mr. John Grogan: Following the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), does my right hon. Friend agree that coal is now a modern, flexible, high-tech industry with a highly skilled and highly productive labour force? In many ways, it is a new Labour dream and is well able to compete on the level playing field to which my right hon. Friend referred.


Does she agree that there is not only an opportunity but a responsibility for RJB Mining and the electricity generators to make use of the breathing space that the Government have given them and to invest for the future, particularly in clean coal technology?

Mrs. Beckett: My hon. Friend is entirely correct, and I am grateful to him for his observations. He is right to say not only that the industry is modern, flexible, high-tech and able to compete, but that the market in this country has been given opportunities and a responsibility to seize them. In addition, given that coal will now have a level playing field in the UK, there are opportunities in overseas markets which, having a sound domestic basis, the industry will be in a better position to seize.

Mr. Tony Baldry: The President has said several times this afternoon that energy prices are higher than they need be. Will she be so kind as to place in the Library the evidence supporting that assertion, and give it to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry? It is slightly surprising, in that all the electricity consumer organisations, the CBI, the Select Committee and others are concerned that Government interference in the energy market will put up prices, to the detriment of consumers.

Mrs. Beckett: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has been following what has been going on. There is no dispute that energy prices are higher than they need be. The Director General of Electricity Supply and the major energy users agree with that. The hon. Gentleman will find some supporting material in the consultation document that I have already placed in the Library—but I can assure him that the assertion is not contested, even by those who have benefited from the fact that energy prices are indeed higher than they need be. They have just kept quiet, but they do not dispute the fact.
Some people may have assumed—perhaps even hoped—that the Government would interfere in a way that raised prices. I stress that the Government are interfering to unrig the market that the Conservatives left. That will lower prices, because the rigging was keeping prices up.

Mr. Bill O'Brien: I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement. As a miner who worked underground for 30 years, I welcome transparent and open statements from Ministers. We have heard it accepted that there has been a serious distortion in the energy market in favour of gas; I welcome the fact that we now have a Government who are being honest.
I consider that the regulator and the Environment Agency have played a part in the distortion of the energy market. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that that cannot happen again, to show that fairness and honesty in the energy market are the Government's intentions for the future?

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, whose long experience in the industry I know of, for his observations and his welcome to the background of the

Government's proposals. It is clearly not altogether understood—if it were, the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) would not have said what he did—that the review and the study done by the consultants have clearly exposed the fact that everything said by the coal industry and the coalfield communities down the years about how the market was unfairly and deliberately rigged against coal, resulting in higher prices for customers, was absolutely true.
The Director General of Electricity Supply has himself recognised that the way the market now operates has resulted in higher prices, and he is seized of the need to take action to redress that.

Mr. John Bercow: Does the President accept industry estimates that about £3 billion of investment in new gas-fired power stations is at risk from an extended moratorium? If she does not accept those estimates, will she tell the House what hers are, and on what they are based?

Mrs. Beckett: There have been a lot of estimates based on a lot of rather wild rumours about what policy the Government might pursue. The Government are now putting these proposals in the public domain for consultation. No doubt people will have the chance to respond, and we will have the chance to assess their responses. We are determined that the coal industry should get a fair place in the market, and that consumers and the coal industry should both be fairly treated. That does require a deferment policy on consents, if justified.
As I have made clear—it will certainly be pursued over the weeks ahead—we shall look carefully, case by case, at any of these issues, should they need to be raised.

Ms Joan Walley: May I tell my right hon. Friend how much I welcome what she and her ministerial team have done in taking this important step toward a sustainable energy policy? However, there are major concerns from coalfields such as that in my constituency, where, because of what the previous Government did, it is already too late to safeguard coal mining. People are anxious that there should be no confusion between the concerns about a level playing field for deep-pit coal and those about opencast, and a licence should not be given to opencast. Will she meet anti-opencast campaigners, to ensure that concerns get fed into the review for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions?

Mrs. Beckett: I thank my hon. Friend. I well recall the circumstances in her area and constituency—the implications for what were quite modern pits there, and the stance that she and her colleagues in the city took on the matter. I also thank her for her words about the ministerial team. One of the rewarding features of this whole consideration of policy has been the way in which Ministers within my departmental team and across Departments have worked so constructively and well together. I am deeply grateful to my hon. Friend the Paymaster General and to the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, and others, for the way in which everyone has worked co-operatively together.


My hon. Friend asked me a question about opencast mining. As I have said, there will be a subsequent statement about opencast in the light of the outcome of the further review. I am always willing to hold meetings or discussions where an issue is directly relevant to my own portfolio and concerns. The issue that she raises may be a matter for my colleagues, but no doubt that will become apparent in due course.

Business of the House

The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Ann Taylor): With permission, Madam Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the business for next week.
The business for next week will be as follows.
MONDAY 29 JUNE—Opposition Day (15th allotted day).
Until about 7 pm, there will be a debate which the Opposition have called "The Government's mishandling of the economy", followed by a debate which they are calling "The Government's broken pledges on class sizes". Both debates will arise on Opposition motions.
TUESDAY 30 JUNE—Progress on remaining stages of the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
WEDNESDAY 1 JULY—Until 2 pm, there will be debates on the motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Completion of remaining stages of the Finance (No. 2) Bill.
Consideration of Lords amendments to the Teaching and Higher Education Bill [Lords].
THURSDAY 2 JULY—Conclusion of consideration in Committee of the Human Rights Bill [Lords].
Remaining stages of the Data Protection Bill [Lords].
FRIDAY 3 JULY—Private Members' Bills.
The provisional business for the following week will be as follows.
MONDAY 6 JULY—Estimates Day (1st allotted day).
There will be a debate on further education, followed by a debate on the Government's proposal for a freedom of information Act.
The question will be put on the relevant estimates at 10 pm.
TUESDAY 7 JULY—Opposition Day (16th allotted day).
There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
WEDNESDAY 8 JULY—Until 2 pm, there will be debates on the motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Remaining stages of the Competition Bill [Lords].
THURSDAY 9 JULY—Debate on the national health service, on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
FRIDAY 10 JULY—The House will not be sitting.
The House may also be asked to consider any Lords messages which may be received.
The House will also wish to know that on Wednesday 8 July there will be a debate on the 1999 preliminary draft budget in European Standing Committee B.

[Wednesday 8 July: European Standing Committee B—Relevant European Community document: SEC(98)800, 1999 Preliminary Draft Budget. Relevant European Legislation Committee report: HC 155-xxx (1997–98).]

Sir George Young: I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving the House next week's business and for indicating the business for the week thereafter.


The right hon. Lady has not found time for a debate on the first special report of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and I make no apologies for returning to this subject in light of the publication this morning of its second special report. The right hon. Lady will know that today's special report criticises the Executive for imposing restrictions on the release of information properly sought by a Select Committee. That can frustrate the work of the House in its primary role of holding the Executive to account.
Yet again, the Select Committee seeks the views of the House at an early date. I hope that the right hon. Lady will end her boycott of those requests and listen to what the Chairman of the Select Committee, the highly respected hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), said when he called for a debate to be held as soon as possible, and warned that the issue was reaching a "high noon" between Ministers and Members of Parliament. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) said at this morning's press conference that not only should there be a debate in Government time but there should be a free vote on the matter. Will the right hon. Lady respond to the all-party requests for a debate, which goes to the heart of our role as Members of Parliament?
The need for that debate on holding the Executive to account has been made more urgent by the use by one of the right hon. Lady's supporters on the Select Committee of a device, which has not been used for 60 years, that can guillotine any line of questioning by any witness or any member of the Select Committee on any subject. That is simply unacceptable. I hope that the right hon. Lady will support the representations being made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir J. Stanley) to the Chairman of the Procedure Committee seeking to end the device.
Also on foreign affairs, the right hon. Lady may have seen that, in another place on 19 June, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Baroness Symons, reaffirmed the commitment to debate NATO enlargement, which was first given nearly a year ago. When might we have that long-overdue debate?
The right hon. Lady has not announced time in the next two weeks for a debate on a Bill to ratify the Ottawa treaty on land mines. We have given a commitment to assist that legislation, contrary to the assertion yesterday by the Secretary of State for Defence. Legislation could have been introduced earlier in the Session, so is it not a sign of panic that the Government have introduced it so late in the session? The right hon. Lady has said that she will not invite the House to sit on a Saturday in order to consider normal business. As the ratification of an international treaty such as this constitutes normal business, I suggest that we consider it instead on a non-sitting Friday.
Finally, the right hon. Lady would not expect me to sit down without asking her, in the interests of all those who work in the building, about her latest plans for the summer recess.

Mrs. Taylor: I shall go through the right hon. Gentleman's points in order. He asked me about the first special report of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He will know that, following the publication of that report, further discussions between the Committee Chairman and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary led to some progress on the matter, which is acknowledged in today's report.
I know that the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has issued a report today, but I have not yet been able to go through it with the Foreign Secretary. However, I am aware that it contains some praise for the Foreign Secretary's actions. We shall examine that report carefully, but I remind the House that the Legg inquiry is well under way, and we do not want to do anything that might prejudice its outcome.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has announced his commitment to publishing that report and to making more information available at that stage if necessary. In those circumstances, I am not sure that it is unreasonable to ask the Committee to contain its impatience a little longer. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that there has been no change in the ground rules regarding information to Select Committees. On that basis, I am slightly surprised that he should ask me to comment on the actions of a member of a Select Committee, because if I did so, he would accuse me of interfering in the activities of that Committee.
I would still like to find time for a debate on NATO enlargement before the summer recess, and I have not ruled that out absolutely. However, it is difficult to have such debates when we are providing time for other matters.
Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman asked me to do that again when he mentioned the land mines issue. As he knows, although the commitment predates his position as shadow Leader of the House, we have been saying all along that we would like to find time to ratify the Ottawa convention as soon as possible. It has been difficult to find time, not least because of the important progress which has been made on Northern Ireland, which I think we all welcome.
The Bill on land mines has not yet been introduced. It is being drafted, and I expect that it will be ready for introduction in the near future. We have heard very recently that the Leader of the Opposition has said that his party would be willing to help with the progress of that legislation. We are asking all parties if they are willing to do that, and we shall be seeking assurances on exactly what that means in terms of the progress of legislation in the House and in another place.
The question of the summer recess depends on the progress of business. All the requests that we receive for extra debates make the start date of the recess more likely to be later than earlier.

Mr. Jim Marshall: May I for once unequivocally congratulate my right hon. Friend and other members of the Modernisation Committee on its recently published excellent report on the scrutiny of European legislation? If the Committee's recommendations are fully implemented, the ability of the House to scrutinise legislation coming from Brussels will be greatly enhanced. However, we need speedy implementation. When does my right hon. Friend propose to have a debate on these matters that will enable the House to vote on the recommendations?

Mrs. Taylor: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's comments. I think that I can say on behalf of the Modernisation Committee that I am grateful for the work that has been done by the European Legislation Committee. We are glad that it has been so supportive of our recommendations.


I should like to find time for an early debate on the report and on the changes that are proposed. I know that some of the changes can be introduced without any alterations to Standing Orders. I know also that there has been at least one pre-Council meeting of my hon. Friend's Committee, where the Minister involved talked through the issues that would be coming up. I understand that that was very successful. I hope that we can continue to make progress, and that it will not be too long before we can make progress on other matters. We shall be discussing them further through the usual channels.

Mr. Paul Tyler: Does the Leader of the House recall that, on behalf of my party, I offered our fullest co-operation to achieve ratification of the Ottawa convention some weeks ago, so that it could be achieved before the anniversary of the Princess of Wales's death? The right hon. Lady may recall that I suggested that, if necessary, we should meet on a Saturday. I believe that the matter is uncontroversial, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will find time for it. Can she confirm the briefing, following the Cabinet meeting this morning, that that is what the Cabinet has in mind?
Turning to the vexed question of the way in which the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs has been treated, may I invite the right hon. Lady to take off her hat as a member of the Government and put on her hat as Leader of the House? May I remind her that both the Committee's first report and the second report, which has been published today, seek not the views of the Government but those of the House? It is the House that is being asked to express a view. By preventing the House from having a view, I believe that the right hon. Lady is not doing her duty to the House as Leader.
I remind the right hon. Lady that there is a Government majority on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, and that we are not talking of a partisan matter. The majority of the Committee believes that it is an extremely important issue. I invite the right hon. Lady to comment on the relationship between the Select Committee and the House. Complaints have already been made to the Procedure Committee about the way in which the Government are treating the views of Select Committees.
Finally, I remind the right hon. Lady that, in the business that she has announced for Monday 6 July, there is an opportunity for a debate on the Select Committee's report. I ask her to ensure that that debate takes place.

Mrs. Taylor: I know that the Select Committee has asked for the views of the House. I know also that there are guidelines, which have been laid out for some time, about the obligations on Government to provide information to Select Committees. As far as I can see from the examination that I have carried out so far—as I have said, I have not read in detail the report that came out today—there has been no departure from the guidelines. I would have to be convinced that there was some need to debate the issue further. There is a code of practice, and I believe that it has been followed.
I can confirm that the hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of land mines with me at business questions in the past, as have a number of my hon. Friends.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: My right hon. Friend has been in the House long enough to

know that all Governments manage to give themselves legislative indigestion from time to time. It will not come as a surprise to her that there is a lot to be done. Will my right hon. Friend accept that the easiest way out is not to keep suggesting that there is some magic way round the difficulty, but simply to abandon non-sitting Fridays and do what previous Governments have done, which is to take Government business on those days?

Mrs. Taylor: I think that non-sitting Fridays are much appreciated by Members who want to plan constituency engagements. I said that I had no plans to take the normal business of the House—the programme that we outlined in the Queen's Speech—on days other than those when we would normally be sitting. I think it is appropriate to consider the possibility of sitting on days other than those that are already scheduled for matters that have come up recently, such as the land mines issue.
No decisions on that have been made. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has written to the Leader of the Opposition, and other parties are being consulted. We shall make decisions through the usual channels so that we can make best use of what time may be available for new issues that have arisen.

Sir John Stanley: Does the Leader of the House agree that the resurrection this week of the antique objections procedure, last used in the House in the 1937–38 Session, is incompatible with the proper functioning of modern Select Committees? Does the right hon. Lady further agree that this is a matter that she, as both Leader of the House and Chairman of the Modernisation Committee, should be supporting for reference immediately to the Procedure Committee? I shall be copying to her this afternoon my formal reference, which I trust she will support.

Mrs. Taylor: I shall look at the right hon. Gentleman's letter when I receive it.

Mr. Ernie Ross: As the person who invoked this procedure, Madam Speaker, I hope you will allow me just for the record to say that I was asked at the press conference—

Hon. Members: What is this?

Madam Speaker: Just a moment. I cannot hear the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross). Is the hon. Gentleman putting a question to the Leader of the House?

Mr. Ross: I am indeed.
I was saying that in the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs there are major disagreements. Those major disagreements involve the obsessional look of some members of the Committee. As on all Select Committees, when there are differences, those who are in disagreement have to use the methods that are open to them. The method I used was not intended by me to stop discussion in Committee.

Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is making a statement, and this is not the time for statements. If he is putting a question to the Leader of the House about next week's business, I ask him to do so precisely.

Mr. Ross: My point to the my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is that she should encourage the


Select Committee to take up the offers made by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary to carry out an investigation when all the information is available.

Mrs. Taylor: I will certainly bear in mind the point that my hon. Friend has raised when I receive the letter from the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir J. Stanley). I know that it is true to say that both reports are split reports, and that there have been differences of opinion in the Committee. I think that it would be wrong for me to go into too much detail in terms of how any Select Committee works in practice. Obviously, if the Modernisation Committee were to turn its mind to these matters, they could all be examined.

Mr. David Davis: Will the Leader of the House reconsider her answers to my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) and to the spokesman for the Liberal party, the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler)? The actions taken on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, particularly the use of an internal inquiry to fend off information being sought by the Committee, have implications for all Select Committees, and as a result undermine the ability of the House to hold the Executive to account.

Mrs. Taylor: I must correct the right hon. Gentleman. The inquiry is independent, and the Government have not said that information cannot be available—it is a question of timing.

Mr. John Cryer: It is about time that we had a debate on the coal industry in Government time, in the light of today's statement.
May I request a debate on the relationship between the European Union and third-world countries? The EU is trying to foist on third-world nations trade treaties which are deeply exploitative and detrimental to their economies. It is also trying to force third-world nations into groups in which there will be big free market areas that could be exploited. It is about time that that sort of practice was exposed. If we do not have time for a debate in July, we should run into August, and perhaps stop the grouse shooting.

Mrs. Taylor: I cannot possibly comment on the summer recess any further than I have done. I agree that a debate on the coal industry is a good idea, but my hon. Friend knows that there is a shortage of time. He also knows that the Government have been active in seeking to protect third-world countries, and my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for International Development and the Minister of Agriculture have been working hard to co-ordinate the Government's approach on these matters—with some success, I hope. I cannot offer a debate in the near future, but International Development questions are on Wednesday.

Mr. Charles Kennedy: May I direct the attention of the Leader of the House to the report of the Public Accounts Committee, which was published last weekend, on what can only be described as the disgraceful fiasco surrounding the private finance initiative forerunner—the Skye bridge toll

contract.? The report says some damning things about previous Ministers and people who continue to be civil servants.
There will obviously be a response from the Scottish Office in due course and an opportunity for a debate, but may I none the less draw the attention of the Leader of the House to the fact that I prayed against the toll order—the Invergarry-Kyle of Lochalsh Trunk Road (A87) Extension (Skye Bridge Crossing) Toll Order (Variation) Order 1997? To be fair, the Government introduced it in good faith, although it has not yet been possible to secure a debate on the Floor of the House or in Committee on the issue.
Given the damning nature of the PAC report, does the Leader of the House agree that we should debate the order with alacrity, so that Ministers can rehearse the background to what is an extremely sorry situation for my constituents?

Mrs. Taylor: I understand the hon. Gentleman's concerns, and I realise that he understands the problems that the Government have—that was the situation we inherited. As he acknowledges, the Government will study the PAC report carefully and put out a formal response. The lessons from the Skye bridge have already informed our best practice guidance for subsequent public-private partnerships, but there is certainly no room for complacency. I shall consider the specific matter of the order, without any promise of a debate, and I shall be back in touch with the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Clive Efford: May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the timing of the debate on the national health service, especially as this year is its 50th anniversary? Furthermore, the debate will take place a day before an important 40th anniversary—my birthday—and the Department of Health is to produce a document stating that life begins at 40. We should celebrate the 50th anniversary of the NHS on the Floor of the House, because it is one of the important issues that underline the difference between Labour Members and Conservative Members. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on allowing time for the NHS to be debated on the Floor of the House.

Mrs. Taylor: I am glad that my hon. Friend has welcomed this debate. It is important that we recognise the 50th anniversary of the NHS, and, as he points out, there is a great difference in approach between the parties. We should never forget that the creation of the NHS was opposed by the Conservative party, which is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health is looking forward to the debate, and to getting a few facts on the record.

Mr. John Butterfill: Will the right hon. Lady reconsider the urgency of the matter of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and the procedure used by the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross)? Regardless of the merits of the subject that was being inquired into, it has raised profound areas of importance for the operation of Select Committees—indeed, all Committees in this House. Surely it cannot be appropriate for a procedure that is more than 60 years old to be used in respect of Select Committees which were set up fewer than 20 years ago.


As the right hon. Lady is hiding behind Sir Thomas Legg's inquiry, will she ask the Prime Minister to reply to my written question, which I tabled more than six weeks ago, asking whether he would extend the scope and terms of reference of the inquiry to include intelligence reports sent to No. 10 Downing street and copies of telegrams sent from Sierra Leone to the Foreign Office, which were copied to 10 Downing street? [HON. MEMBERS: "Line to take."] The Prime Minister has not confirmed that that will fall within the terms of reference of the inquiry.

Mrs. Taylor: I have nothing to add on the hon. Gentleman's first, specific point. In terms of his written question, it was made clear from the beginning that it would be perfectly possible for there to be an extension of the terms of reference, if the Legg inquiry wanted that to happen.
Conservative Members made a sedentary intervention about whether the line to take was being put on my pager; I can tell the House that Holland and Mexico are through, and that Belgium is out of the world cup.

Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: The Leader of the House said that she would be having discussions with the Foreign Secretary about this morning's report. Will she urge the Foreign Secretary to make available forthwith the information sought by the Select Committee? We are meeting next Tuesday at 9.30 am, and it would be in the mutual interests of the House and the Government if such documents were made available.
Will my right hon, Friend reflect on the fact that there is a void in our procedures? There should be a fast-track way for Select Committees, when faced with an impasse, to be able to report such matters to the House. I remind her that, because Legg is independent, we have no way of knowing when he will be able to report. The summer recess is coming up, and it would be wholly unsatisfactory for the matter to be put off until the autumn.

Mrs. Taylor: Again, I have nothing further to add, except that my understanding of the timing of the Legg committee is that we are hoping that the report will be available next month.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Is the Leader of the House aware that, as Chairman of the Procedure Committee, I was gravely concerned to learn what transpired at the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs on Tuesday 23 June? Does she agree that the archaic procedure which was used could negate and frustrate all the work of the Select Committees of the House of Commons? Select Committees are not independent of the House; they represent the House, and their valuable work could be frustrated on many occasions if an individual member of a Committee chose to use that procedure.
I shall ensure that my Committee gives the matter consideration at the earliest possible date, but does not the Leader of the House believe that it is of such importance that it might be the subject of a special debate on the Floor of the House—before the Procedure Committee considers it?

Mrs. Taylor: If the Procedure Committee chooses to look at the matter, I shall consider its report with great

interest. I note what the hon. Gentleman says about procedures being somewhat ancient, but he is usually the first to defend our traditional procedures.

Mr. Michael Clapham: Despite the tight timetable, will my right hon. Friend consider squeezing in a debate on occupational health and safety, so that we might discuss the implications of the health and safety report published today by Her Majesty's inspectorate of mines? The report shows that accidents in mines have been under-reported to a substantial degree–52 per cent. If that is the case in the mining industry, which is extremely tightly regulated, it could be much worse in other industries.

Mrs. Taylor: My hon. Friend raises an important issue. We should all be concerned about occupational health and safety. I was not aware that there has been under-reporting of 52 per cent. That is very alarming. Given that my hon. Friend represents a mining constituency, I understand why he is extremely concerned by that, as we all should be. I cannot promise a debate in the near future, but perhaps my hon. Friend and colleagues with a particular interest in the matter could apply for an Adjournment debate, which would be one way of taking the matter further.

Sir Patrick Cormack: First, may I make it quite plain that the Opposition's support for the Ottawa agreement has never been in doubt? My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary made that clear to the Minister of State many months ago.
May I return the right hon. Lady to the subject of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs? Will she, in her capacity as Leader of this House, take on board the point made by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler)? It is crucial that Select Committee reports are debated. There is no more important Select Committee, nor a more respected Chairman than the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He has asked the House to give its views. It is the right hon. Lady's duty to find time for a debate, even if we sacrifice a second non-sitting Friday, to ascertain the views of the House. Will she make sure that that is done?
The rather arcane procedure was perfectly legitimately used, but it nevertheless raises many important questions, given that departmental Select Committees were not established until 1979 and that procedure was last used in 1937. Will right hon. Lady, at the very least, give an unequivocal assurance, in her capacity as both Leader of the House and Chairman of the Modernisation Committee, that she will have immediate discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) to decide how the matter can best be resolved at the earliest possible opportunity?

Mrs. Taylor: On the hon. Gentleman's first point, on the Ottawa convention, we look forward to receiving more details about what the Opposition's offer of co-operation means. Obviously it must apply to both Houses, and must not prejudice the hard work on legislation in which Members of this House have been involved over the past year. That is why I said that we needed greater clarification, and why the Prime Minister has written to the Leader of the Opposition.
I have nothing further to say on the other matter that the hon. Gentleman raised. The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) made it plain that the


Procedure Committee intended to look at one aspect of the issue. Obviously I look at every Select Committee report, and I always consider what I should be doing. However, when it comes to debates on Select Committee reports, it would normally be for the Liaison Committee to decide. Governments respond to Select Committees. The Select Committee is entitled to make any recommendation it wishes, but, as Leader of the House, I must make a judgment about what business should be conducted on the Floor of the House.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Speaker: Order. I am going to move on now, because I have the minority party interest to consider in this House.

Points of Order

Dr. Liam Fox: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. As you are more than aware, there has been much comment in the House on the Government's policy of financially discriminating against students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland when they seek to attend universities in Scotland. You are also aware, from what the Leader of the House has said, that the issue will shortly come back before this House.
In the House on 23 June, in column 821 of Hansard,the Scottish Minister responsible said that the number of applicants to Scottish universities from the rest of the UK was down to 33,081. The following day, the Prime Minister said:
the number of English students applying to Scottish universities is up, not down. It is actually 33,000."—[Official Report, 24 June 1998; Vol. 314, c. 1047.]
Even in this Government, "down" cannot mean "up". This matter is very important, and I wonder whether you have had any requests for a statement from the Scottish Office or No.10 to clarify it. If not, is it not reasonable for the House to expect clarification before we attend to this important matter next week?

Madam Speaker: As the hon. Gentleman is aware, I am not responsible for policy matters or for comments made by various Ministers. If he believes that there is a discrepancy, he can pursue the matter by raising it with the Ministers concerned, but he should raise no further points of order. I am not responsible for Ministers' comments. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will find a way to raise the matter with the two Ministers concerned or via the Order Paper.

Mr. Damian Green: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek guidance on a related issue. I have received a written answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), which says that the Government do not collect the statistics on which the statements by the Prime Minister and the Scottish Office Minister were based. Thus, other parts of the Government say that they do not collect the figures that allow them to decide whether the figure is up or down. Which should I take as a more authoritative statement: a written answer from a Minister in the relevant Department; or an oral answer from the Prime Minister to the House?

Madam Speaker: Why does not the hon. Gentleman have an Adjournment debate and get the Minister at the Dispatch Box to sort it out?

Opposition Day

14TH ALLOTTED DAY

Private Members' Bills (3 July)

Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. Paul Tyler: I beg to move,
That this House supports the Energy Efficiency Bill and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill, as amended and properly scrutinised in Standing Committee; trusts that they can now complete all remaining stages on Friday 3rd July; and urges the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons to re-examine the procedure for Private Members' Bills.
This is an opportunity briefly to look at how we handle private Members' legislation. The Leader of the House will agree that there is a widespread view in the House that we need to think about the issue carefully. I hope that, in what will be a comparatively brief debate, we can do just that. Naturally, I look forward to taking the discussions further in the Modernisation Committee. As the Leader of the House will know, I have said in the past that this issue would be high on our priority list, and representations have been made to her from other quarters that that should be the case.
I make no apology for spotlighting two particular Bills that have received considerable cross-party support in the House. One has only to look at the early-day motions signed by Members of all parties in support of those Bills, and at the letters received by organisations supporting the Bills, not least from the Prime Minister in the case of the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill, sponsored by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young).
Both Bills are extremely important, and because they have received such considerable support, we make no apology for drawing special attention to them this afternoon. Some may ask, "Why not look at other Bills in that context?" We would answer that, having looked carefully at the Bills at the top of the list, no two others have all the criteria that we consider important.
First, those Bills are totally uncontroversial, as far as we can detect. Secondly, they have received all-party support, including ministerial support. I would be the first to acknowledge the assistance that has been given in both cases by the Government Departments concerned.
Thirdly, and extremely importantly, the Bills have been fully considered in Committee. However, the big change that has taken place—I pay tribute to the Government in a spirit of amicable co-operation, which is my hallmark—is that the Government responded to the motion when we first tabled it by immediately moving to get the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill into Committee.
Moreover, with unprecedented speed—unique in my experience—they tabled a sittings motion to ensure that rapid progress was made in Committee on Tuesday this week, with the result that the Bill has completed its Committee stage. That is a direct result of our initiative, and I am delighted by it. It is extremely valuable. It immediately disposes of the view that had been expressed in one or two isolated quarters in the House that such Bills, particularly that Bill, had not received proper scrutiny in Committee. It has.
In addition, we set two further criteria. There is strong public support outside the House for progress on those two Bills, because it is recognised that they would have real benefits. There is an urgent need to make progress on the Energy Efficiency Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett) and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill. It is obvious that we shall not be able to complete the process for all
private Member's Bills, but we believe that those two Bills deserve the special attention that we have given them, because they meet all those criteria.
In the past, the Government have argued that, if we were to improve or accelerate the process for private Member's Bills, it would set a precedent. I understand that argument: it is often used in the House. I suggest that on this occasion that fear is misguided and misconceived. Everyone agrees—the Government make reference to this in their amendment—that the Modernisation Committee should examine this issue. We cannot have a temporary precedent: that is absurd. Clearly, as soon as the Modernisation Committee was able to turn its attention to this matter, such a precedent would swiftly go. I emphasise the point that hon. Members on both sides of the House and on both sides of the Committee want to make progress on this front.
It has been suggested that this debate is a waste of time because these Bills will get stuck in the other place. If that is so, what was the point of taking the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill in Committee on Tuesday? That was a charade, a farce: the Government were just playing to the gallery. Either it is possible for those Bills to complete their passage through Parliament in the current Session or that was a waste of time.
Moreover, what is the point of having a discussion on Friday 3 July if these Bills are doomed to failure because of some absurd Machiavellian plot in the other place. I believe that the process can and should be speeded up, and that that argument is not valid. There is a real chance of progress in the other place. I am assured by people who have a greater knowledge of these matters than I that there are no fundamental objections either to these two Bills or to most of the other private Member's Bills at the top of the list for Friday 3 July.
Our revised motion does not seek to push the House into taking a view that it may find difficult. It does not impose some new mandatory timetable on the consideration of Bills on 3 July. I was surprised by the Government's reaction to our initial rather more forthright motion. It was as if the Government thought that they were the arbiters of how the House should handle its business. The House decides how it should handle its business. The so-called business managers have an extremely important function to play, as do the usual channels, of which I am but a minor part. The House must decide how it wants to make progress on legislation and on other matters. There was a hidden hint of amour propre and false pride in the Government's apparent reaction to the idea that anyone else should come up with suggestions about accelerating important business.
I hope that during this short debate my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to speak briefly about the merits of the Bill of which he is the promoter, so I do not propose to enter into that discussion. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) will have an opportunity to wind up the debate.


All hon. Members—of any party and of no party—have a responsibility to reflect public concern about the way in which we handle our business, including private Member's Bills. There is considerable anxiety among the public, the press and viable and effective organisations. They have a perfect right to express their views on how we handle our business.
Those concerned with the business of Parliament at present feel that the process by which we consider extremely important proposals is inadequate, and that it is our business to improve it. We all need to reflect that anxiety and concern. I hope that the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor), who is here in her capacity, not only as Leader of the House, but as Chairman of the Modernisation Committee, will also reflect those concerns in her response to the debate.

The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Ann Taylor): I welcome this relatively short debate. In view of the changed motion tabled by the Liberal Democrats, I shall not move the amendment that we had thought necessary. We have no difficulty reaffirming our support for the Energy Efficiency Bill and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill, as amended. We think that the whole House should be able to agree with the terms of the motion. Unfortunately, one or two hon. Members may still intend to object to those Bills on 3 July, but it is important that they should be aware of the strength of feeling in the rest of the House.
The Government are happy to be associated with the Energy Efficiency Bill and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill, not least because we have given the hon. Members involved assistance with drafting, and we are anxious that those Bills should make progress. I see no reason why they cannot make progress if people examine the issues in the cold light of day rather than seek to make themselves noticed through some maverick activity.
I was somewhat concerned, as were some of my hon. Friends, that the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) has chosen to highlight two specific Bills, and has not mentioned any of the other significant measures on the agenda for 3 July. For reasons that will be obvious to the hon. Gentleman, I must mention the Breeding and Sale of Dogs Bill, which he might well have included in the motion. I am keen to see that Bill on the statute book. I receive many welcome letters about it, regardless of any indirect lobbying from other quarters on that issue. Other important Bills will be coming up on 3 July. If hon. Members co-operated, there would be time for several of them to complete their passage through the House on that day. I hope that several Bills will proceed to the House of Lords.
It is difficult to achieve a correct balance of rights on a range of issues. The vast majority of hon. Members are supportive and want private Member's Bills to go through, but one or two hon. Members are able to prevent that and to frustrate the will of the majority. We often have to balance rights. Past attempts to change the procedures for private Member's Bills have often been driven by one particular Bill and one particular interest. If we are to consider changing the procedures for private Member's Bills, we should not take as our starting point what has happened to one particular Bill. Far too often, people's views about changing procedures are prejudiced according to whether they support the Bill in question.
When we get round to discussing procedures for private Member's Bills, we must all remember that the rules for the Bill that we support must be the same as the rules for the Bill that we oppose. We cannot have different rules: we cannot cherry-pick or deal with certain Bills in certain ways. We must establish rules that apply in all circumstances.
The motion mentions the Modernisation Committee, and I am happy—both as Leader of the House and as Chairman of the Committee—to acknowledge that the Committee should look at private Members' legislation in the future. We are involved in other inquiries at the moment, and it will not be possible for us to make progress this side of the summer recess.
The Committee made clear on previous occasions—not least in our first report on the legislative process—that we would want to return to the issue of private Members' legislation at some point. It is appropriate that we should revisit the issue through that Committee, and I hope that we can consult other hon. Members. However, we must have consistent rules for all private Members' Bills; otherwise, we will create more difficulties than we solve.
I hope that we can make progress on many of the Bills on 3 July. The hon. Member for North Cornwall said that some may get stuck in the House of Lords. It is virtually impossible to predict what will happen to any of the Bills, but a good number—which have a high level of support in the House—have merit and would make the law better in a range of different aspects. Private Members' Bills have an important role, but hon. Members can be over-ambitious in what they seek to achieve through them. It is always possible for the Government to help in drafting or providing advice on these matters.
I wish the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) well with his Bill on 3 July, and we will have to see what happens. It is too late to change the rules before then. It would be unwise to change any rules hastily—and, in particular, because of our personal views of any Bill. I hope that the two Bills highlighted by the Liberal Democrats make progress, as I do about a good number of other Bills—such as the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Bill, the Breeding and Sale of Dogs Bill, the Local Authority Tenders Bill and the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Bill.
I am sure that the hon. Member for North Cornwall, when tabling the motion, used the two Bills as examples, not as an exhaustive list of the Bills he wanted to make progress on 3 July. We will have to see what happens then. We must come back to the issue of private Members' legislation, and it is appropriate that the debate should take place within the Modernisation Committee. After that, the House will have some time to consider any alterations we might wish to make.

Sir Patrick Cormack: In this wonderful spirit of cross-party accord, I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and the Leader of the House on the admirable lucidity and brevity of their speeches, which I shall try to emulate.
The hon. Member for North Cornwall has done the House a service in moving the motion—although I was somewhat wryly amused, on looking at my Order Paper


today, to see that the motion that appeared upon it was decidedly different from that which had appeared earlier in the week. I can understand why the Leader of the House said that she had no difficulty in accepting the motion and that she would not be pushing her amendment. I certainly have no intention of seeking to divide the House, and I am equally happy to accept the terms of the motion.
It is important that the Modernisation Committee looks at the matters. It would be quite absurd if the Committee, having decided to look at Government legislation, did not turn its attention to private Members' legislation. I sincerely hope that the Committee will do so at a reasonably early date and will come forward with a unanimous report—as it did last year on Government legislation—which commends itself to the House.
I endorse what the Leader of the House said. We cannot have cherry-picking, and we need rules that apply to all Bills. We must remember the rights of minorities also. I wish my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) well with his Bill. I very much hope to see it on the statute book because it would be to the advantage of many people. I wish success also to some of the other Bills mentioned by the Leader of the House.
There is no reason why those Bills should not go through on 3 July, as the right hon. Lady said. All it requires is an economy of words on the part of those who speak and a generosity of spirit on the part of those who attend. If both those qualities are in evidence, the Bills should see their way on to the statute book without greater delay.
Whenever we debate this subject, I should declare an interest. In the 27 years that I sat on the Back Benches, I promoted something like 15 private Members' Bills. I have suffered, as others have done, from having "Object" shouted when I had a measure of enormous importance for the welfare of the nation. A couple of years ago, I co-operated to allow the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill to have an airing. I then had one of my Front-Bench colleagues shout, 'Object,' to a Bill that the then Government were most anxious to see on the statute book. In the end, it got there, but other Bills of mine have been delayed.
If only the House, and the Government of the day, had accepted the Bill on criminal records that I proposed on the one occasion when I drew a place in the ballot, 10 years ago, we would have had a paedophiles register for a long time. We all suffer the rough with the smooth, and sometimes the rough with the rough. Sometimes in this place, as one door closes, another shuts in your face. I have found that on a number of occasions.
It is important that we have brief speeches today—again, that could be a trend-setter. I entirely endorse the remarks of the Leader of the House, and I accept the remarks of the hon. Member for North Cornwall in the spirit in which they were made. It is important that the Modernisation Committee should look at those procedures. It must do so in the round and come forward with proposals which commend themselves to the whole House. The proposals should be so framed as to make the maximum use of time for private Members' Bills.
The Government should consider a self-denying ordinance, and restrict the number of Bills that they bring forward so that private Members have a little more time

at their disposal. I see from the frown by the Leader of the House that that might not entirely appeal to her. It is important that proposals are well thought out and that they protect the rights of majorities and minorities. Above all, we must give those truly non-controversial measures—of which the Bill proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire is a shining example—a better chance to get on the statute book. With those words, I am delighted to add my commendation of the motion.

Mr. John Burnett: I understand that one of the keys of this debate is brevity, and I shall gallop through the advantages and provisions of my Bill as swiftly as I can.
The Energy Efficiency Bill proposes that every purchaser, or mortgagor, is told how energy-efficient their property is when they have a survey. The Bill proposes that a rating be made of the property, which is that measure. When one buys a car, one knows how many miles per gallon one can get out of it. The Bill proposes that when one buys a house, one knows how energy-efficient it is. The Bill would inform purchasers or mortgagors of what steps they could take to make their property more energy-efficient. The Bill proposes that the approximate cost of taking those steps, and the approximate pay-back time, be provided.
The Bill has had a lengthy airing in the House—one morning for its Second Reading debate and an hour or two in Committee—and has widespread support. Some 266 hon. Members signed the early-day motion in support of the Bill. If one deducts the payroll vote and those persons who do not customarily sign early-day motions, it can be seen that a significant majority support the Bill. I am grateful to hon. Members for their support, not just for the early-day motion but throughout the passage of the Bill so far.
The Government have supported my Bill. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle) and her officials, who have taken considerable time in ensuring that the Bill's drafting is correct. We have also had the time of parliamentary counsel as well as of ordinary officials in the Minister's Department.
I have received many letters supporting my Bill from the public, local authorities and the private sector. There has been much consultation on it, and the Council of Mortgage Lenders has signified to me on many occasions—and as recently as this morning—its support for the Bill.
I should like to give only one, quick example of the benign effects that my Bill would have. Last month, I opened a housing estate at Burwash Common, in Sussex. The developer, Millwood Homes, makes every endeavour to construct energy-efficient homes. Some of its competitors are not so scrupulous or conscientious.
My Bill would highlight the advantages of buying and investing in energy-efficient homes, and it will sort out the wheat from the chaff—homes that have that benefit and have had that investment from those that do not. My Bill is supported by many people in the construction industry.


My Bill has the twin advantages of saving individuals money in the medium and long term and of helping to reduce the use of fossil fuels and to save our environment. I hope that time will eventually be found for my Bill to be passed.

Jackie Ballard: I have only just finished writing my speech—as you may have seen, Mr. Deputy Speaker—but, as I am supposed to be replying to the debate, perhaps that is not such a bad thing.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) said, we have deliberately chosen in our motion to highlight the two Bills that have genuine cross-party support and have had no credible opposition—except for the reaction of a single hon. Member, who I notice is not in his place today.
Although both Bills would very significantly affect the lives of millions of people for the better, I shall speak only to the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill, which has been supported by hon. Members of all parties, both Front Benches and a wide variety of organisations representing cabbies and their passengers, not to mention the many hon. Members who signed an early-day motion in support of it. Moreover, before the general election, the Conservatives in another place announced their intention of introducing similar measures if they were to form the next Government.
I congratulate the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) on his efforts to keep the Bill moving through Parliament. I am pleased that, at long last, it has finished its Committee stage, when helpful amendments—which were supported by the Minister for Transport in London—were made to it.
In the Bill's Second Reading debate, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire seemed to sum up the mood of the House when he spoke of his
opportunity to return to some unfinished business
in his former Department. There was almost universal support for the Bill in that debate. However, in his speech, he noted with some foresight:
It is always possible that, as this Bill tries to cross the legislative bridge, a parliamentary troll will appear from underneath and gobble it up".—[Official Report, 23 January 1998; Vol. 304, c. 1253.]
I did say "foresight", not "Forth" sight—as I should not for one moment suggest that the right hon. Gentleman had in mind the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth).
The Bill is a measure of considerable importance to many people, not only in London, but nationwide. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge)—who would have liked to be in the Chamber for this debate—has presented to the House a petition bearing the signatures of 8,000 people who support the Bill. Furthermore, as I said, an early-day motion supporting the Bill has been signed by many hon. Members.
In a letter to the Suzy Lamplugh trust, the Under-Secretary of State for Women said that the Bill's provisions would
increase the safety of women passengers".
The Suzy Lamplugh trust, among many other bodies, has been working hard to ensure that progress is made on the issue. I pay tribute to Paul and Diana Lamplugh for their

extraordinary energy and effectiveness in working on the matter. They have done much to ensure that it remains high on the agenda.
The Government's position on the issue has been confused. On Second Reading, they announced their support for the Bill. Ministers have spoken out in favour of legislation, but failed to come up with any clearer commitment than the classic fudge about "when parliamentary time permits". We have heard that many times before. Although the Government announced their intention to set up a Standing Committee to consider the Bill, that did not happen immediately. It has now happened—in response to the Liberal Democrat motion that we are debating—and the Bill was passed by the Standing Committee, after two sittings.
The Bill will remove the anomaly whereby London's minicabs are left out of legislation covering all other cabs in the United Kingdom, and it addresses an urgent matter of public safety. Last year, 67 people were assaulted and 18 people were raped in minicabs in London. I am told that the figures are even higher this year. Tragically, only last night, a young woman was abducted and sexually assaulted in a minicab in London.
The Bill would greatly increase the security of many Londoners, not to mention the millions of visitors to our capital city.
Today's debate is not only about two vital pieces of legislation. It is about the urgent need to change the way in which this place works. Perhaps because I have been an hon. Member for only a short time, I do not have the patience of my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall. I share the public's feeling that this place is surrounded in mystery. The public wonder why the Government are reluctant to let hon. Members have time to pass a Bill that has such widespread support, both in this place and elsewhere. They wonder what that says about the Government.

Mrs. Ann Taylor: The hon. Lady said that she has not been an hon. Member for long. Perhaps I could presume to remind her that the Government do not decide how much time is allowed for consideration of private Member's Bills. At the beginning of each Session, the House decides how much time will be available.

Jackie Ballard: I thank the right hon. Lady for pointing that out to me. Nevertheless, in my short time here I have found it difficult to see how the Government have always pursued the House's interests.
What message does preventing the passage of such Bills send to the public about the Government's commitment to modernisation or their commitment to parliamentary democracy? The Government have managed to find time to legislate on matters that were not in their manifesto—such as imposing tuition fees on university students, and taking benefits away from single mothers—but, after 13 months, say that they cannot change the system, to allow the will of the House to be done on private Member's Bills.
Our democracy will not be valued or respected unless the House finds ways to do its business more sensibly. Liberal Democrat Members are pleased to be able today to devote some our time to debate the subject.

Mr. Mike Gapes: In the spirit of being non-controversial—as the hon. Lady said—will she tell us


why the original Liberal Democrat motion mentioned two specific private Members' Bills but did not mention the Wild Mammals (Hunting with Dogs) Bill?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We cannot debate a motion that has not been put before the House.

Jackie Ballard: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I did not need help to get out of that situation. As the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) knows, I am a strong supporter of the Wild Mammals (Hunting with Dogs) Bill. However, even I would have to admit that that Bill has attracted controversy and has not received the widespread support that the two Bills that we are debating have had. I would have wished it to be otherwise.
As I said, we are pleased to have given some of our time for today's debate. I am also delighted that the Government will not oppose our motion. I hope that, from 3 July, people in London will be able to travel more safely, and that history will record today as the one on which Parliament changed from being the Government's poodle and the filibusterer's paradise to being the home of common sense and genuine plural democracy.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House supports the Energy Efficiency Bill and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill, as amended and properly scrutinised in Standing Committee; trusts that they can now complete all remaining stages on Friday 3rd July; and urges the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons to re-examine the procedure for Private Members' Bills.

Social Welfare

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): I should point out to the House that Madam Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. John Swinney: I beg to move,
That this House notes that Britain spends less on welfare as a percentage of GDP than many of its European partners; believes that economic growth and enterprise must be matched by policies designed to promote equality and social justice, and in this light expresses concern over the Government's recent actions in respect of benefits for single parents and claimants of disability living allowance; and calls on the Government to ensure that any further reform of the welfare system focuses on the needs of the most vulnerable in society rather than the demands of the Treasury and is neither discriminatory, economically inept, morally repugnant or spiritually bereft.
I have to thank the Liberal Democrats for rapidly accelerating the time scale for today's debates. The Government Whips Office told our Whips Office that the Minister for Welfare Reform would reply to this debate, but, because of the accelerated time scale, he has not yet arrived. [Interruption.] I was going to say—I hope that my comments are appropriate—that no debate on welfare reform would be complete without the Minister for Welfare Reform, and I see him arriving excellently on cue. My longer-serving colleagues advised me that it is unusual for a Minister in a Department other than the Scottish Office to reply to a Scottish National party Supply day debate, so we are particularly grateful that the right hon. Gentleman is here. I hope that he can catch his breath as quickly as I have had to catch mine.
I shall cover four areas: the reality of Labour's welfare actions since May last year; the proposals in the welfare reform Green Paper; the vision that the SNP offers for improved social welfare through the Scottish Parliament, when the Scotland Bill has finished its passage; and, finally, the outlook for meaningful improvements to the welfare system in an independent Scotland.
My colleagues will pick up on part of the detailed critique of existing Government welfare priorities and offer some advice on the fine tuning, which Ministers may wish to take into account. As Labour Members will be aware—some of them may not be quite as aware as they are about to be—the Government have some problems in Scotland just now, not merely in the opinion polls but in local authority by-elections.
Some Scottish electors who voted handsomely for the Labour party in Scotland in May last year are beginning to find that what they got was not exactly what they were expecting. Ministers may want to listen and learn from criticisms made on the doorsteps of central Scotland, where seats have been changing hands—from the Labour party to the SNP—in by-elections. The Government should start to listen to some of those criticisms, because the more they continue down their present road of welfare reform, the more out of step they will become with what many of us would acknowledge to be the accepted values of the mainstream community in Scotland.
Perhaps more than in any other area, in welfare the Labour Government have pursued a definitive direction since the general election, but that direction has put them at odds with their grass roots in Scotland. When they


came to power last year, they did so with upbeat political support behind them. People expected things to get better. They are now realising that, in so many respects, things have not got that much better in respect of welfare. For that matter, things have not been much different from the policy that the previous Government were intending to pursue.
There was general surprise that one of the first actions of the Labour Government on welfare was to pursue a Social Security Bill that tampered with entitlement to back payments of housing and council tax benefits, leaving the most vulnerable worse off. The new Government even took the previous Tory Government's proposals one damaging step further. Who would have thought that the centrepiece of that legislation would have been cuts to benefits for lone parents? At the time, the Government justified their decision by talking up limited packages of welfare to work for lone parents and child care, but the Government ignored the warnings from both sides of the House that their schemes did not protect all the losers.
The Government emphasised that the benefit changes would not affect those already on benefit. What about those who go into work through the new deal and then, unfortunately, return to the dole queue? What about those who find the opportunities for child care inadequate—with levels of financial support well below what is required, especially for parents with more than one child—and who are forced to choose to concentrate on their No. 1 priority, which is looking after the children? Those mothers and fathers find themselves losing out as a result of their efforts to get back into the workplace. When the Department of Social Security publishes the figures for that area later in the year, I am confident that our assertion will be supported by hard evidence.
Welfare to work for lone parents is undoubtedly a step forward, and the measure has received a general cross-party welcome, but it does not match the damage caused by the reduction of single parent support. I hope that the scheme will develop through improved support for child care and wider options, including for study or training. In itself, however, it does not recognise the reality that not all parents are or will be in a position to enter the workplace. That group—often the most vulnerable single parents—is the one that has been and will be most damagingly affected by the lone-parent benefit cuts.
The Government cannot run from that reality, and it is the most powerful indictment of the philosophy that runs through their welfare reform efforts, which seem intent on creating a division between the so-called deserving and undeserving poor. The Government's philosophy is increasingly that of sink or swim. Unfortunately, the cuts in single-parent benefit mean that some people are undoubtedly sinking.
The other main area of welfare reform on which there has been Government action rather than the preliminary work of proposals, as we have seen in the Green Paper, is the benefit integrity project review of those on disability living allowance. That is where we see the clearest evidence in the Government's approach of the use of budgetary controls as a means of deciding welfare priorities.
Most of the criticisms surrounding the benefit integrity project to date have been of the administrative failings, the inadequacy of procedures and the rather cruel

abruptness of the review process. I am glad to say that, after sustained pressure from both sides of the House, some of those technical failings in the procedure are slowly being ironed out. The Select Committee on Social Security applied pressure with a particularly well-produced report, and I am glad to see the Chairman of that Committee here tonight. I hope that he will contribute to the debate. I hope that he is much recovered from his sore back, which we all read about in Hansard. We hope that mobility will still be extended to him, if to no one else—it certainly has returned to him, at least.
The report highlighted the advantages of the Select Committee process in looking into an issue that has caused genuine concern to all our constituents, regardless of our party. The fact that Labour Members of the Select Committee, with all the pressures involved in being on the Government side, were prepared to associate themselves with a report so critical of the benefit integrity project was particularly helpful in forcing action over the weaknesses of the project.
Interestingly, many of the criticisms made and questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) in her Adjournment debate on the benefit integrity project some months ago were repeated in last week's debate. My hon. Friend's debate revolved around whether the project should be suspended temporarily, pending a review, or amended as we went along. The debate last week did not appear to have moved much further forward, although the desire for a cessation of the project was certainly as vociferous on both sides of the House then as in our earlier discussions.
There has been movement in the Government's response to some of the details of the project. In February, the Secretary of State for Social Security confirmed in a written answer to me that new evidence requirements were to be introduced to ensure that no claimants lost benefit purely on the basis of information supplied by them in their assessment forms. In recent months, there have been further concessions. In a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Moray, the Government confirmed that disability groups would be more closely involved in the preparation of the letters and forms used in the project, and that there would be improved training for visiting and assessment officers and improved access for disabled groups to the departmental decision-making process. Those are all welcome steps.
However, I think that the Government have accepted that that still leaves many questions as to how a project of that seriousness and sensitivity was allowed to wreak such havoc within our community without the process of government drawing it to account and delivering a more soundly based initiative.
I accept that there is some uncertainty about who has ownership of the benefit integrity project. I suspect that more of it lies with the previous than with the present Government; we could take until 10 pm to debate that, so I shall leave it there. The project was first mooted under the previous Government, but the present Administration have continued with the scheme because of a flawed analysis of the problem. The Government have asserted that the review will ensure that claimants receive the benefits to which they are entitled, but even a cursory examination of the categories covered by the review process shows that that is not the whole story.


The benefit integrity project focuses on those disability living allowance claimants who receive the higher rates of care and mobility allowance. If the process examines only those who receive the most money, there is likely to be a disproportionate number of cases in which benefit is reduced. If one genuinely wants to ensure that all people receive the benefit to which they are entitled, the process must look at those on the lower rates, so that their assistance can be increased if necessary.
The one-sided nature of the benefit integrity project gives the public the perception that it is, more than anything else, about cost saving. From listening to the individuals who come to my constituency surgeries to tell me about their difficulties with the disability living allowance, I believe—I am no medical practitioner—that mistaken judgments have been made, based on a desire to contain expenditure of DLA rather than pay that benefit to the people who are entitled to it.
The Conservatives triggered the benefit integrity project on the flawed assumption that fraud was widespread among those claiming DLA. The results of the project so far clearly disprove that theory, but the mechanisms employed are still those negative procedures of a drive to root out cheats in the benefits system. That approach insults the vast majority of honest recipients; it is designed to erect hurdles to claimants and to put unnecessary and unjustifiable fear and stress on vulnerable people. The lesson is that benefit fraud should be tackled as an administrative problem, rather than as a structural problem in some benefits.
If the project is an example of the thrust of future welfare reform, many people in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom will be left with a nasty taste in their mouths—they will believe that there is real reason for concern about the development of welfare reform and its implications for our citizens. With cost saving at its core, and with claimants having to jump through administrative hoops before they receive what they are entitled to, the reform means that we are moving away from one of the basic requirements of a decent society.
The values of such an approach are divisive; they are not the values of that modern, progressive, social democratic society that we should all seek to create. That approach belongs to a party and Government whose strategy on welfare is founded not on the need to establish the support structures of a comprehensive welfare state, but on two glaring misconceptions.

Mr. Desmond Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I apologise to him and to the House for not being present at the start of the debate—it took me somewhat by surprise.
The hon. Gentleman talks about a strategy for welfare benefits reform; in anticipation of this debate, I took the trouble to try to research the welfare benefits strategy of the Scottish National party. Unfortunately, the only information that the SNP website provides is that all policies are currently under review, so the only available document is the SNP's manifesto for last year's general election. Having studied it carefully, however, I cannot see one word in it about welfare benefits reform or about

an overall strategy for welfare benefits. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take this opportunity to explain his party's strategy.

Mr. Swinney: The hon. Gentleman apologises for being absent from the Chamber at the start of my remarks. If he had been here, he would have heard me having to apologise for the fact that I, too, was almost absent because of the speed with which the previous debate collapsed. I welcome his presence and his intervention—I am sure that there will be many more such interventions. The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear me say that I shall deal with my party's priorities on welfare reform strategy later in my speech, so perhaps he will allow me to make progress—if I do not deal with his point, I am sure that I shall hear from him again.
The Government are pursuing a strategy that is, I believe, based on two misconceptions: first, that the United Kingdom spends too much on welfare support; and, secondly, that we face a demographic time bomb. The Government must explain how a nation that spends less per head on welfare support than 12 of our European Union partners can be deemed to be spending at an unsustainable level.

Mr. Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for very generously giving way again. The hon. Gentleman's statistics were in The Scotsman this morning, although they were not directly attributed to him. Again, in anticipation of this debate, I researched those statistics, and found that they were wrong. The hon. Gentleman's office told me that the basis for the figures was a document published by the Scottish Association for Mental Health. I have a copy of the document, which, indeed, cites those statistics, but does not give their provenance. Perhaps, before he moves on, he could tell us where they come from.

Mr. Swinney: The hon. Gentleman digs into some of the background to the debate, which I am about to fill in.
The figures show, for example, that the United Kingdom spends on social security £2,000 less per head than France and £4,000 less per head than the small independent nation of Denmark, and that, in terms of percentage of gross domestic product, the United Kingdom spends less than many western nations.

Mr. Browne: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Swinney: No. I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman twice, and I want to make progress on what is a substantial speech.
The Government's priorities have led them to make choices about the level of welfare expenditure and to insist that the welfare budget is out of control, but, in comparative terms, we do not spend nearly as much as other countries, despite the fact that we can find resources to spend on defence—indeed, we are third from the top of the European league in terms of defence spending as a percentage of national wealth.
The Government frequently state that we face a demographic time bomb, with a rapidly increasing elderly population draining the national wealth. That ignores the important contribution that our elderly population make to the generation of wealth. For many years, people have


argued that there is a demographic time bomb and that we face a looming crisis, yet they ignore the fact that, according the Office for National Statistics, we spend a smaller proportion of our welfare budget on the elderly than we did in the early 1950s. They should ask why spending for social security for the elderly has remained static—at about 5 per cent. of GDP—for the past 20 years. Indeed, spending on the elderly is far lower in this country than in many European Union nations. We need to ask why the Government have not made moves to improve the financial support to ensure, for example, that the basic state pension is increased in line with earnings rather than with prices.

Ms Sandra Osborne: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that up to 1 million pensioners do not claim the income support to which they are entitled, and that welfare reform should focus on how financial support can be given in a more practical way?

Mr. Swinney: I am happy to associate myself with what the hon. Lady says. From our constituency contacts, we all know about people's lack of awareness of the benefits to which they are entitled.
The perceptions that we allow people to have about claiming benefits are important to the welfare reform debate. If claiming benefits is stigmatised, and we all know that it can be, people will be put off claiming their benefits. I do not want a single person to receive anything that he or she is not entitled to, but I want those who are entitled to benefits to have them. We must not create a climate in which people believe that they are not entitled to claim certain benefits because of our attitudes to them.

Mr. Browne: The hon. Gentleman will hear no dispute from us over those remarks, but the starting point for any debate on welfare benefit should be the Government's Green Paper. Why has he not yet mentioned the principles set out in the Green Paper?

Mr. Swinney: This Supply day debate is the first time since I became a Member of Parliament that the Scottish National party has had parliamentary time in which to pursue its own argument. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to finish what I am saying, he will be satisfied by my comprehensive coverage of the anxieties that trouble him.
Choices must be made about priorities within the Government's choice of public expenditure priorities. They have chosen to continue with substantial expenditure on, for example, Trident nuclear missiles. They have failed to adopt a sufficiently progressive taxation strategy; abolishing the ceiling on employees' national insurance contributions, for example, would return some progressiveness to the system. They have made their choices, but, if they were prepared to make different choices, we could divert some of what are described as the burgeoning public finances into a social security system that could end the dependency of the means test and guarantee a basic income for everyone. That is the basic question hanging over the Government's welfare reform agenda.
As we have seen, the Government's actions create unease among those on the receiving end of benefits. The Government's strategy in the Green Paper—can the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) hear

me?—seems to be built around the notion of a welfare contract under which the state accepts certain obligations, mainly the provision of access to opportunities for work, while the citizen accepts the obligation to seek work.
However, the concept of a contract implies that, if one party breaks its terms, the other party's obligations cease or are radically abridged. That does not lie easily with traditional notions of social obligation, drawn from family, religious and non-religious backgrounds in our civic society. It has been assumed that society has an unconditional obligation to support its weakest members, an assumption fundamental to any discussion of welfare reform.

Mr. Steve Webb: The hon. Gentleman is reaching the part of his motion that refers to the Government's policy being "spiritually bereft", which is an intriguing phrase. I do not think that the Minister for Welfare Reform can be described as spiritually bereft. What does the hon. Gentleman mean by the phrase?

Mr. Swinney: The source of that remark was a motion put to the Labour party's Scottish conference in March, which reflected on the Government's position on lone-parent benefits.

Mr. James Wallace: The motion was carried.

Mr. Swinney: The hon. and learned Member is right. The motion brought an uncharacteristically ferocious reaction from the Secretary of State for Scotland; perhaps each of us would be angry to have our own party say that about us.
I have two main criticisms of the agenda set out in the Government's Green Paper. Where their actions are not misplaced, they are mis-focused. I want to discuss welfare-to-work initiatives, the integration of the tax and benefits systems, the focus on fraud, welfare in 2020, and the proposals for a stakeholder pension.
Many of us have often accused the Chancellor of the Exchequer of being a one-club golfer whose economic policy rests solely on the interest rate decisions of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee. The Government's social security policy appears to take a similar tack in its dependence on welfare to work. Only 25 per cent. of benefit goes to those who may be able, economic climate permitting, to transfer from benefits to employment. Welfare to work is not a big idea, but a small part of what should be a broader reform strategy. Many people who receive benefits will never be able to work, and there is a danger that welfare to work will structure the Government's alternative to a well-funded benefits system.
The strategy is limited in detail, and in what it ignores. There are clearly identified weaknesses in the various schemes on offer, the details of which my hon. Friends will develop. Perhaps most seriously, the strategy of getting people back to work is trumpeted and pursued, almost to the detriment of any other aspect of reform. That sidelines the equally important idea of keeping people in work. When key support benefits for the disabled can be accessed by the unemployed only to help them back into work, rather than by the employed to keep them in work, something does not quite work. Early reports on the


success, or otherwise, of welfare-to-work schemes suggest that the rate of access to jobs is increasing. We shall be in a better position to judge that following a full economic cycle.
My main criticism focuses on the philosophy underlying the scheme. Everyone agrees that it is important to maximise access to work, and to remove barriers created by high marginal tax rates caused by means-testing and the sudden removal of benefits such as free school meals and assistance with council tax or housing costs. Such moves are steps in the right direction, but the Government must not demonise those who are unable to return to work, whether or not that inability results from disability, caring or parenting. To promote paid work as virtuous, and dependence on benefits as morally suspect, is to stigmatise those who must, for good reasons, depend on benefits. The current effort focuses assistance on those who can move back to the workplace, but the rhetoric sets apart those who, through no fault of their own, cannot do so.
The Government's proposals for linking the benefits and tax systems to encourage people back to work are welcome as far as they go. However, they offer little to those who are not in a position to return to the workplace. The Government's approach is unbalanced; they offer tax incentives for those on low incomes, through packages such as the working families tax credit, but they do not refocus their spending policy on extending the tax responsibilities of those with high incomes who receive universal state benefits.
Much more should be done. The closer integration of the tax and benefits systems should provide an opportunity to provide a minimum guarantee for our citizens that is tied into greater redistribution of the resources available in the welfare pot. We should give more to those at the bottom, and less to those at the top. There should be more streamlined and efficient administration and distribution systems for benefits. The Government seem to fall between two stools: they are unable fully to grasp the thistle of their initial steps into a more co-ordinated welfare and taxation system because of their electoral dependence on voters who are perceived not to be prepared to pay for the system.

Mr. Michael Connarty: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: Don't give way to him. He has just come in.

Mr. Swinney: I am well into my speech, and the hon. Member for Falkirk, East has just arrived, so I will not give way to him.
We must not forget that 75 per cent. of those who receive benefits do so because of age or some degree of disability. Welfare support cannot, and should not, be avoided. That group feels increasingly marginalised and threatened by the rhetoric of the Government's welfare strategy, which implies that people are getting something for nothing, or claiming more than they are entitled to.

Miss Anne Begg: The hon. Gentleman says that the Government should focus on the

needs of the most vulnerable in society. How are the Government to do that without getting people back to work, giving people a minimum wage and making savings in other parts of the welfare system to spend more money on the very group that the hon. Gentleman describes as the most vulnerable? Does the Scottish National party propose means testing to make sure that vulnerable people get the benefits that they deserve? If not, how would the SNP do it? The hon. Gentleman cannot merely criticise the Government without telling us what the SNP would do.

Mr. Swinney: I shall advance our solution in due course. The hon. Lady must say what parts of the welfare budget she is prepared to cut. We delude ourselves if we believe that the welfare budget is at an appropriate level. We must recognise our society's difficulties, and ensure that resources are applied appropriately for individuals.
The Green Paper contains much that should concern people. Much of that is encapsulated in the Government's vision for welfare in 2020. It is a statement of intent that does not show a clear and positive vision of the future of our welfare state. The Government state that, by 2020, they hope:
Welfare will be provided by three channels: our Active Modern Service, based on a single work-focused gateway into the benefit system; mutual organisations and private providers, delivering a substantial share of welfare provision, particularly for pensioners; and high quality health, education and other welfare services.
Cut through the language, and that means that the poor will be justified only by work, and private provision will be at the heart of welfare provision. The Government give the sense that their social obligation to the weakest in our society is not as great as it has been in the past. [Interruption.] That child's cry shows that my argument about the dangerous future for welfare reform if left in the custody of the Labour party was far too compelling.
Let us consider the welfare reform agenda as it relates to the dimension created by the Scottish Parliament. I want to set out what could be delivered by a Scottish Parliament, with its limited powers, and under independence, the preferred policy of my party. The Government had the opportunity earlier this year to join welfare rights organisations across Scotland in supporting amendments to the Scotland Bill to allow devolution of the administration of social security to Holyrood. That would have allowed the Scottish Parliament more flexibility and the chance to reform and streamline the structure of benefit delivery. The Government opposed those measures. It is left to individuals and the Scottish Parliament to find a meaningful role for the Parliament in assisting in the provision of welfare support.
Over the past few months, the SNP has been preparing our proposals for the Scottish parliamentary elections. One of the policies that I shall outline today would have a direct and immediate impact on the most vulnerable sections of Scottish society. It has always been our central philosophy that the interests of the people of Scotland come first. In the Scottish Parliament, we want to develop a best deal department that has as its core the identification of measures that will get the best deal for Scotland from the framework set out in the Scotland Bill. It would find opportunities in Westminster legislation and European directives to secure the best deal for the people of Scotland. The team will interpret directives and legislation in the best interests of groups in Scotland. Welfare reform offers an important focus for it.


It has been estimated in parliamentary answers that more than £300 million of social security benefits remain unclaimed in Scotland. A few years ago, the SNP-controlled Grampian and Tayside councils vigorously promoted measures to help pensioners with their fuel bills that resulted in substantially increased uptake of benefits.

Miss Begg: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Swinney: I have spoken for some time. I want to allow other hon. Members to say their piece.
An SNP Administration would conduct a programme of benefit-boosting reviews nationwide. It would be the team's job to seek additional money for Scotland's pensioners, single parents and disabled people.

Miss Begg: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Swinney: No, I want to make progress.
Unlike the Department of Social Security's reviews, ours would focus only on those who are entitled to claim more benefits. For a small investment, the door is open to a financial boost of potentially hundreds of millions of pounds for the poorest sections of Scottish society, with the burden borne by the Treasury rather than the already limited Scottish budget.
That is only one way in which the Scottish Parliament can advance the social welfare agenda in Scotland. There is little doubt that any strategy for pushing forward welfare frontiers must include efforts to co-ordinate our work through improved availability of social housing and better community health care. Initiatives in residential care, care in the community and so on should also play a part. For the first time, Scotland will have a scrutinising, investigating, legislating, innovating Parliament which can pull together the threads of reform and co-ordinate our activities to ensure that the best possible support is given to the people of Scotland.
The radical welfare provision changes that I believe are required will come only when the people of Scotland have the ability to use all their own resources and have powers on all aspects of policy making at their disposal. Under independence, the SNP would pursue priorities that would improve the delivery of the benefit system. The first step would be much closer integration of the tax and benefit system, going further down the road tentatively embarked on by the Chancellor in his most recent Budget. That would partly involve returning the progression removed from the taxation system by the Conservatives. That strategy is based on the underlying philosophy that the waste in the system does not lie in welfare support to people. We must ensure that we have a fair and progressive system that applies to all groups.

Mr. Ian Davidson: rose—

Mr. Swinney: To be fair to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), who was formerly one of my constituents, I shall not take any more interventions.
I have three further points on our proposals. First, welfare strategy must seek simplification of the tax and benefits system. There is much more room for linking the operations of the Inland Revenue and the various benefits agencies, and integrating administration and delivery to cut the bureaucratic jungle of 12 different agencies and

numerous forms, procedures and access points. Integrating those systems is essential to allow improved assessment of benefit needs based on existing tax liabilities.
Secondly, our approach must allow more effective targeting of benefit fraud without the excesses of schemes such as the benefit integrity project. Designing tighter schemes should remove the room for abuse. Thirdly, closer integration of benefit payments and taxation would open the door to more efficient targeting of resources, diverting them away from those at the upper end of the income scale towards those on the lowest incomes. The money in the system should be focused on those with the greatest need, but not through the crude mechanisms of means or affluence tests. There should be a general calculation of tax liability that pays out benefit and pays in tax as required. That is the substance of progressive taxation.
The focus of any welfare strategy in Scotland, or the UK, should be on the faults in the system, rather than on the faults of those who claim. The debate must avoid, at all costs, stigmatising and deterring the poor and focus on opportunities for more sensible solutions. Regrettably, the Government's welfare strategy is a new Labour fix based on Tory foundations. It is little wonder that the words read out by the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) were used by the Labour party's Scottish conference. The Minister for Welfare Reform is a fair-minded man. He knows that the words came from his political friends, not his political enemies. They are words of warning that the Government should heed.
As we look at the future economic development of our society, it is clear that we shall be part of a highly competitive international economy. Some individuals in our society will be able to prosper in that economy; others will not. As that pattern emerges, we must be prepared to distribute resources to those who cannot prosper. It is far from clear in the Government's thinking that they recognise the consequences of that economic inequality. The reforms proposed by the Government and the thinking that they display suggest that there will be a diminishing role for the state, rather than a continuing and demanding role, which is what we perceive. The Government appear to be moving in the opposite direction to that which the public require.

The Minister for Welfare Reform (Mr. Frank Field): I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
welcomes the Government's comprehensive approach to welfare reform around the principle of work for those who can, security for those who cannot, which was set out in the Welfare Reform Green Paper; notes the Government's commitment to consultation with organisations of, and for, disabled people, and the substantial safeguards included in the Benefit Integrity Project; notes the Government's commitment to helping today's and tomorrow's pensioners and welcomes the establishment of the Pensions Review and the action taken already to help today's pensioners through cutting VAT on fuel and paying winter fuel payments to all pensioners, notes that the new Deals for Lone Parents, for the Young and Long-Term Unemployed and for Disabled People are the largest assault on worklessness and social exclusion ever undertaken in Britain; and welcomes the action taken by the Government in the Budget to support families and children through increasing child benefit and the family premium in income support and by the proposals to introduce a working family tax credit and a disabled person's tax credit .'.


As a fair-minded person, I pay compliments to the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney) for opening the debate. This is the first debate that we have had on welfare reform in the round. The official Opposition have not chosen to use any of their time to stage such a debate, so this is the first opportunity that I have had to come to the Dispatch Box to set out the Government's views. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that.
As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Opposition day debates usually allow Back Benchers to participate fully both in criticism and in the development of policy. In the previous Parliament, the then Secretary of State for Social Security was the then right hon. Member for St. Albans. He has moved to another seat, which shows that on this topic he had certain judgment, which one respects. The right hon. Gentleman built up a reputation for taking almost an hour to open such debates on behalf of the Conservative Government. The hon. Member for North Tayside, in his enthusiasm to engage us in a debate on welfare reform, almost broke that record. I shall be as brief as I can.
The structure of the Scottish National party motion is clear, although it was not always followed in the opening speech. The hon. Gentleman was at liberty not to do so. I wish to take each of the main ideas and comment on them, and then move to the amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and other right hon. Friends. I shall comment on each of the main points in our amendment. Before I do so, perhaps I may say a word about the Green Paper.
The hon. Member for North Tayside, no doubt being a fair-minded person like me, failed to mention the Government's approach to welfare reform. The Green Paper is not a shopping list of ideas that we brought into office and intend to ram through irrespective of the comments and views that people hold. It is not a laundry list that we have gathered up from somewhere and which we think can be commended to the House and the nation without the most careful thought. It is understandable that some people have not immediately understood what we are about in the Green Paper.
For the first time ever, the Government have laid down the principles that should govern welfare reform. Likewise, the Green Paper has listed 32 success measurements so that the Government can audit their affairs internally and stand accountable to the electorate as the Parliament unfolds for our success in achieving those objectives. The Government have not waited, as some parties might have done, until near an election date to name the success measurements. We have laid them down at the beginning of the Parliament so that we can turn them into clear measurements to guide our policy and be held accountable for it.
When the period for consultation is over, we shall introduce more detailed policies within the framework of the principles of reform to help fulfil the success measurements that we have outlined.
While I welcome the motion, I checked before I came here whether the welfare reform unit had received the comments of the Scottish National party on the Green Paper. They have not yet arrived. I await them anxiously.

No doubt the hon. Gentleman can rightly say that he has begun that contribution in this debate, but, if he wants to add anything, I am happy to give way.

Mr. Swinney: I can assure the Minister that he will have a submission from the SNP before his deadline.

Mr. Field: I am immensely grateful for that undertaking.
There are five main assertions in the motion. The first is that the country and the Government should move to spending on welfare something similar to the proportion of gross domestic product that other countries spend. I take issue with such a simplistic view of what welfare expenditure should be about. The previous Administration could boast that they increased welfare expenditure by double the rate of increase in GDP. If we look at the consequences, we find that there was a doubling of the number of people living in households drawing means-tested assistance. Merely to spend more is not necessarily better, and does not necessarily achieve the objectives that we want to achieve.
The United States spends double the proportion of GDP that we spend on health. Does anyone think that Americans are twice as healthy as people in Britain? Surely this debate is about what the money is spent on and the objectives of welfare expenditure in the round.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: I have a high regard for the right hon. Gentleman's comments on the subject. His record speaks for itself. I seek from him clarification of the definition of expenditure on the welfare system. Is it household income, family income or individual income? That comes into the general debate, and it would be helpful if we could have that guidance.

Mr. Field: I have spent many Parliaments debating these issues with the hon. Lady, and she knows perfectly well the answer to that question. It depends which aspect of welfare spending one is looking at.
Of course the Government are spending more, but we are concerned with why we are spending what we are on welfare and what the outcome of such expenditure will be.
The second assertion in the motion is:
economic growth and enterprise must be matched by policies designed to promote equality and social justice".
That is one aspect of the motion to which we fully subscribe. If we look at the Government's record to date, we see that there is a growing insistence on, for example, equality of the respect that should be accorded to individuals. Similarly, there is a massive concern in the Government about equality of opportunity—not just one opportunity but a renewal of opportunity through individual lives. The hon. Member for North Tayside alluded to that.
While we do not sign up to the view that there should be equality of outcome—that is not achievable this side of paradise—there is a duty endlessly to re-offer opportunities to those of our fellow citizens who have not been able to make the most of opportunities that occurred early in life. I hope that one of the great themes of this Government is the extension of social justice. When I discuss our amendment, I shall try to persuade doubters—if there are any in the House—of our intent on that score.


The third assertion in the motion is an expression of
concern over the Government's recent actions in respect of benefits for single parents".
The hon. Member for North Tayside, being a fair person, listed at least some of the opportunities that the Government have offered and are continuing to offer to single parents who are currently on benefit. However, I wish to affirm today, from the Dispatch Box, that the Government believe that the stance we have taken on lone-parent benefit is right. It is a policy with which I agreed when I was in opposition; I spoke in favour of it then—there are hon. Members here who were present in the Chamber when I did so—and the hon. Gentleman could hardly expect me to do otherwise now that I sit on the Treasury Bench.

Mr. Simon Burns: I respect what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, but will he confirm to the House that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security and other Ministers in the Labour Government changed their minds from their pre-election rhetoric, in which they utterly condemned the policy that they have now implemented?

Mr. Field: The hon. Gentleman is clearly running a campaign to present himself to the House and the country as a non-serious person. I knew that I should not give way, as he cannot resist saying things like that. We all have a job on our hands to protect his image and prevent his views from gaining wider currency. The answer is simple: the Government's intention is clear and if Ministers change their minds to the point where one agrees with them, one should stand up and say, "Well done," instead of nitpicking and trying to undermine them. Our objective is to equalise support for children. I advanced that view in the previous Parliament, and it is now being advanced by the Labour Government.

Mr. Burns: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Field: I shall not give way again—I have to try to protect the hon. Gentleman from himself. If he behaves himself, he might be able to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The motion also expresses concern about claimants of disability living allowance, but the hon. Member for North Tayside found it hard to disagree with the Government's stance. The DLA was one of the elements of the benefit integrity project, which was introduced by the previous Administration. We had been concerned about the operation of the project, we listened to the House, and we made changes. I was not sure what other changes the hon. Gentleman wanted us to make, other than scrapping it and starting again.

Mr. Webb: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Swinney: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Field: I shall happily give way to both hon. Gentlemen in a moment.
The crucial fact that the House has to face is that the benefit integrity project is being run in respect of all the major benefits. The Public Accounts Committee wishes us to carry out those reviews, because it is concerned

about the delivery and accuracy of our benefits. If hon. Members think that the Government should be doing other things and ignoring what the Public Accounts Committee requires us to do, they should say so.

Mr. Webb: Is not the scandal about the benefit integrity project not so much that the Government knew nothing about it until the infamous phone call at Preston station, but that when they did find out about it, it took them the best part of a year to sort it out? The hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) had an Adjournment debate and Sunday newspaper headlines pushed them on a bit, but the Government had to be forced, inch by inch, to introduce a halfway decent system. Should they not have acted last summer and not taken so long to listen?

Mr. Field: The answer to that is no.

Mr. Swinney: The right hon. Gentleman asked what more I should like to be done. One issue that has been continually raised is that all those who had their DLA reduced before the 9 February changes in the rules should have their cases reviewed on a mandatory basis. I believe that the Government are moving in that direction, but if the Minister would take this opportunity to confirm that, no one would be happier than I.

Mr. Field: If the hon. Gentleman had read the debate that we had not so long ago in the House, he would already know the answer to that. The Government are as concerned as he is about that matter, and we have acted.
The last of the assertions, facts, beliefs, opinions—whatever one wishes to call them—in the motion is that
the Government should ensure that any further reform of the welfare system focuses on the needs of the most vulnerable in society rather than the demands of the Treasury"—
which is a euphemism for cuts. I remind the House of what I said when announcing the Green Paper, with the authority of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the whole of the Government: this is a reform of welfare that is not cuts-led. I made it clear at that time what was negotiable and what was not negotiable in respect of the reform programme. We said that our historic commitment to the poor was not negotiable. We said that our wish to reform was also not negotiable, but that how we reform was negotiable. That is why I am so anxious to receive the SNP's comments on our Green Paper, because they will help to inform the next stage of our debate.
Referring to the Government amendment, I shall merely draw the attention of the House to the main actions that we have already taken to fulfil our election commitments. In doing so, I want to emphasise—it is right that our amendment does so—that we say that we shall consult at each stage of the reform programme, not because we think that it is an easy option, but because, no matter how much one thinks one knows, no matter how clever one thinks one's civil servants are, no matter how much expertise one might think one brings into government, a reform programme that is open and inclusive, and which listens and learns, will clearly be a more effective programme than one that reforms by ambush. The Government's commitment to consult is real, and it will continue throughout the whole of our reform programme.
I am disappointed that, despite the brevity with which the hon. Member for North Tayside spoke when commending his motion to the House, he did not find time


to highlight the actions that the Government have already taken to fulfil our election promises and to carry out the wishes of the House. No mention was made of our review of pensioners' income, which is to be used as the foundation both for deciding what action we take to help today's pensioners and for ensuring that we have in place policies to prevent many of today's workers from becoming poor, as did their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.
The hon. Gentleman made no mention of our action on VAT on fuel, of our winter fuel payments, which were universally given and designed to help the poorest pensioner households most. No mention was made of the Government's determination to take seriously our responsibility to counter fraud, and our equal determination, unlike the previous Administration, diligently to seek out those who are eligible for benefit but not claiming it. There was little about that in the hon. Gentleman's speech.

Mrs. Ewing: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have pursued the issue of fuel poverty over many years in the House and, while I do not want to detract from the action that has been taken, does he admit that there were serious flaws in the implementation of that scheme this winter? Many pensioners became extremely confused, as some were paid twice, while others were not paid at all. There is still a need for further action on ensuring automatic payments to those vulnerable people during the cold winter months.

Mr. Field: Of course there is. The Government are learning and we want to learn from that huge initiative, which no other Government had undertaken. There was no machinery in place—we had to start from scratch. If the hon. Lady is trying to tell the House that many of her pensioners were confused, I have to say that, happily, that confusion was not shared by Birkenhead pensioners, at least not by those I have met.
There was some mention of the opportunities now being offered to lone parents. The hon. Member for North Tayside said that that was undoubtedly a step forward, but he made little mention of our efforts, particularly those of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security, to ensure that our proposals are successful.
There was little talk, other than negative, carping criticism, of the opportunities that are being offered to young people through our welfare-to-work proposals. There was no mention of the medley of measures that we have unveiled for the long-term unemployed. I may have missed it, but I heard no mention of the pilot projects for which we have sought bids to extend employment opportunities to the long-term sick and disabled.
It was as if, for the Scottish National party, there had been no Budget. There was no talk about the Chancellor's announcement of the biggest ever increase in child benefit or the increase in the scale rates of income support for younger children. There was no mention of next year's change in the family premium or of the minimum wage, which was mentioned by one of my hon. Friends. There was no talk about the working families tax credit proposals, which will ensure that people with children will be better off in work than on benefit.
As I said before, the motion refers to a policy that is
neither discriminatory, economically inept, morally repugnant or spiritually bereft.
I shall deal with each of those points. We plead guilty to having a discriminatory policy. Almost all the measures that we have introduced discriminate in favour of the poor and those who are excluded from the labour market. If we are charged with discriminating in favour of the poor and ensuring that, in spending taxpayers' money, we most favour those who have least, we plead guilty.
We are told that our proposals have been economically inept. Those words are on the Order Paper; they may have been used elsewhere, but I am happy to answer them. The Government have introduced the biggest ever programme to extend opportunities and access to the labour market. If that is economically inept, we plead guilty to that charge. Our programme will continue to be guilty of that.
We are told that our policies are morally repugnant. The Chancellor has levied more than £5 billion from the privatised utilities to offer opportunities to individuals who, under the previous regime, faced, at best, a blighted future. The Chancellor has significantly reshaped national insurance contributions to make it more advantageous to employ those who earn least rather than those who earn most. If that is morally repugnant, we plead guilty.
We are told that our policies are spiritually bereft. If a Government who begin the biggest ever crusade to combat social exclusion are spiritually bereft, we plead guilty. If it is spiritually bereft to initiate the most significant ever crusade to offer hope to people who had blighted lives, we happily plead guilty to that charge. If it is spiritually bereft for the Government to begin the most determined ever crusade to raise educational standards in all our schools, we want to plead guilty. If it is spiritually bereft for the Government to initiate the most fundamental ever crusade to extend lifetime opportunities, we want to plead guilty.
If the Scottish National party wants to go into the election for the Scottish Assembly or any other election on that ticket, claiming that we discriminate in favour of the poor, that we are so economically inept that we have offered the unemployed the most ever opportunities and the most access to the labour market, that we are morally repugnant by significantly redistributing wealth through the Chancellor's two Budgets and that we are spiritually bereft, the fight is on. Many of us will greatly enjoy the battle ahead.

Mr. Simon Burns: I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney) on securing the debate. However, as I listened to his fairly long speech, I began to think that even some Labour Members might be thinking, "Come back, Bill, all is forgiven."
I welcome a debate on the strategy for social welfare in this country, even if, at times, the strategy is somewhat blurred and difficult. I shall begin by stating some basic principles that I suspect do not divide the House in any way.
I believe, as I suspect does every Member, that the state has a fundamental duty to provide a safety net to help those in our society who are genuinely less well-off. In any civilised and decent society, it is the duty of those


who are more fortunate and successful to make a contribution to ensure that those who fall on hard times for part of their life or who have difficulties throughout their life are provided with help through the state to enhance their standards of living.
I believe also that it is crucial that any Government, regardless of their political complexion, do all that they can to minimise the evils of unemployment. There is nothing more disastrous than people who desperately want to work, but who, though no fault of their own, are unable to do so. The concept that is abroad in far too many parts of this country, that people on welfare are simply scroungers, is obscene, and it would help if we could educate people out of the ignorance of making such trite comments, which are bandied around far too often in our pubs and on our highways and byways.

Mr. Field: There is more rejoicing in heaven over the repentance of one sinner.

Mr. Burns: I deliberately hesitated for that intervention from the right hon. Gentleman, but, if he had read more of my speeches over the past 11 years—sadly, I know that that is low on his list of priorities—he would understand that I have not once changed that original view.

Mr. Field: I have read all the hon. Gentleman's speeches. I notice that he was promoted only after a period of silence.

Mr. Burns: I am confused by that remark, because I was not promoted from being a Trappist monk straight to this position; I had a job in between, and it certainly did not require me to be silent.
I suspect that the motion tabled by Scottish National Members is part of their war with the Labour party which will continue until the Scottish Assembly elections next year. Their motion will obviously be attractive to many Labour voters in Scotland—and, indeed, in England—because many of them believe that, after Labour has been in power for one year, they have been betrayed. Nothing shows the starkness of that betrayal more than the rhetoric on lone parents before and after the general election.
The Minister for Welfare Reform's speech, particularly the second half of it, was eloquent—not to say impassioned. But however clever and endearing the speech was, I have to say it was long on soundbites and short on substance. Indeed, the Government amendment is the same, tending to gloss over—we would expect this of any Government—some of the glaring failures of Government policy.
Take, for instance, the new deal for lone mothers. Of course its aim is laudable: no one in his right mind would criticise an initiative to help lone parents, by means of advice and so on, back into work, thereby enhancing their standard of living and that of their children. What has marred the new deal is the soundbite politics that has accompanied it. I acquit the right hon. Gentleman of that charge, but there have been too many grandiose claims of success during the early stages of the new deal.
Last October, the Secretary of State got into terrible trouble on the "Today" programme and on "Newsnight", because she was too eager to claim success after the first three months of the new deal, trying to use figures cleverly to portray a triumph that was not all it was

cracked up to be. That is regrettable; it brings the whole process into disrepute and causes problems for the Secretary of State's credibility and the credibility of her policy.
We face the same problem now. Government statistics show that a monthly average of 75 per cent. of the 22,402 letters being sent out are not responded to—

Mr. Field: What changes would the hon. Gentleman make to the scheme?

Mr. Burns: I am glad the right hon. Gentleman asked me tha—I had anticipated it. I shall come to the answer shortly.
Of all the people who have received letters, about 7.5 per cent.—on the latest monthly figures—have got into work, but, at the same time, there has been a 15 per cent. drop-out rate among the lone parents who have found work. If the Government stick to their original budget for the new deal, some 6,000 lone parents will get back into work, at a cost of just under £30,000 a job. Ironically, that works out at about £15 an hour—just over three times the national minimum wage which the right hon. Gentleman's party plans to bring in.
I have been asked what changes I would make if I had the power to make them. I would make two variations to the scheme. First, I would make it compulsory for lone parents in receipt of an invitation to attend a first interview. I would not make the whole scheme, like Wisconsin's, compulsory: that would be wrong and draconian. A compulsory first interview, however, would enable lone parents to learn more at first hand from a personal adviser exactly what the new deal is, what it may have to offer them, and how it can help them into work. At present, some of them may cynically dismiss this as just another unhelpful Government scheme.
Secondly, I would carry out more research into the 75 per cent. who are not replying to their letters, by chasing them up and finding out more about why they think the scheme is not relevant to them. Taken together, those two changes would advance the aims and aspirations of the policy.

Mr. Webb: Uncharacteristically, the hon. Gentleman is making a measured and constructive contribution. He criticises the new deal for lone parents for the low response rate, but he must know that it was modelled on Parent Plus, initiated by the Conservatives, who budgeted for an even lower rate of response than the Government have achieved. So how can the hon. Gentleman criticise the Government scheme?

Mr. Burns: We monitored the Parent Plus pilot schemes with a view to detecting the problems and weaknesses in them so as to be able later to enhance the performance of the plan. I hope that, as the new deal progresses, the Government will also try to learn from some of the problems that have emerged, and will work out some of the reasons why the new deal does not attract more people into work. That would enable them to fine-tune the scheme.
The benefit integrity project is mentioned in laudatory terms in the Government amendment, as one would expect—but what has been going on behind the scenes? Throughout the second half of last year and early this


year, there were the problems with the disability living allowance. Recipients of that allowance were petrified and confused by the rumours and counter-rumours, the briefings and counter-briefings, about what was to happen. Would it be means-tested; would it be taxed?
Then the benefit integrity project gave rise to even greater concern and hardship. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. There is a general buzz of conversation in the Chamber. I ask hon. Members to listen to the Member who is speaking.

Mr. Burns: A significant number of the appeals heard before 25 March were successful. That shows that the decision to go ahead with the project was wrong and taken in haste. I cannot yet put my finger on exactly what happened, because I have not yet had an answer to my questions on the subject—I have been waiting for a week but have received only a holding answer from the DSS. No doubt I will get a proper answer shortly.
I find it extraordinary that, two days before polling day, following pilots, but without a ministerial decision, civil servants could decide to launch such a scheme nationwide. It is even more extraordinary that, for 26 or 28 days after coming to office, Ministers seemed oblivious of the benefit integrity project. It is particularly odd that the junior Minister in the other place, who has close links with disability lobby groups, was oblivious of the scheme until that extraordinary phone call on Preston station on 29 May.
I look forward to answers to my questions. I should like to know the extent and content of the briefings Ministers were given by civil servants on first entering the Department last year. It seems incredible to me that such briefings did not mention the project—a massive project which, as many people now know to their cost, had a significant impact on their lives. How could it have been unknown to Ministers; how could it proceed without their direct authority?
As has been said, it seems extraordinary that, as the problems became greater as the number of people affected increased, nothing was done until the Secretary of State for Social Security took action in February 1998. As I said in the debate initiated by the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) in February, and again in last week's debate on the Social Security Select Committee report, I do not believe that the Select Committee's approach—to put the scheme on probation until 31 July—is the best one. We shall go into recess shortly after—or, if we are lucky, shortly before—that date, which effectively means that no action will be taken to assess that probationary period until we return to Westminster in the autumn. The Government should have accepted that there was a serious problem, and that more fundamental things were needed than those that the Secretary of State had done, and suspended the project until they had ironed out the difficulties.
Behind the words of the Government's amendment is the inescapable fact that the Government have, in the minds of many of their supporters in many parts of the country, broken their election promises and done things—especially on child benefit—that supporters who, in good faith, voted for Labour candidates on 1 May 1997, never believed that a Labour Government would do.
I exonerate the Minister for Welfare Reform, because, as he said, he always took the view that the way that the previous Government were proceeding on equalisation of child benefit, in particular, was the right way to proceed, even if it was politically unpalatable to some. I also think that we have been witnessing the confused emergence of a policy that is still emerging, because so many things have been kicked into the long grass through reviews—and, in some cases, reviews of reviews. We have the extraordinary situation regarding pensions—which, to the best of my knowledge, no one has discussed in detail tonight—where the Prime Minister stepped in, a month or so ago, and told everyone to get together and come up with a policy in the autumn, when we had been expecting one in the first half of the year.
There is confusion, there are reviews and there have been broken promises. On the fundamental issue, however, I cannot believe that anyone in the House would disagree that the state has a duty to enhance the quality of life of those less well off in society, although we may disagree on some of the avenues of approach and the fine detail of how to achieve it.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I wish to make a short speech—[Interruption.]—unless I am provoked, in which case I might speak for a long while.
It is important to have prime time debates on social security issues. I want to spend 10 minutes reflecting on some of the problems north of the border. The Government have broken new ground in some areas and in some of the approaches that they have adopted in exchanges across the Chamber. My position on some of those approaches is clear: the Government should be encouraged in the main thrust of their strategies. Some of the ideas in the Green Paper are well worth considering and promoting. Nevertheless, there are peculiar problems, some of which are found north of the border.
I want to put one or two ideas into the head of the Minister for Welfare Reform; the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith), might address some of them when he replies to the debate.
I was a wee bit disappointed earlier in the debate. I have a lot of time for the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney), the Scottish National party spokesman who opened the debate, who I know thinks about these matters a lot—although perhaps not for the style and approach of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), who was pushing his luck with interventions—but it is difficult to know what the shape of Scottish National party policy would be were there ever to be an independent Scotland.
I would never want to promote an independent Scotland—I will die in the ditches arguing against it—but it is a perfectly honourable political position. We, north of the border, will be hungry for high-quality debates about social security and other matters that introduce into the debate some better statistics and better arguments. I look forward to crossing swords with the hon. Member for North Tayside in the coming months to discover what the Scottish National party has in store for the people of Scotland—and I shall express my point of view as well.
The most important thing that I have to say to Ministers is that I have inquired into not only Scottish National party policy, but the availability of statistical data about


the disaggregation of the amounts that are spent on benefits in Scotland, and I believe that it is extremely difficult to mount the properly informed debate that is essential. I hope, above all, that Ministers will try to identify ways of finding out how the system works now and how it might work in an independent Scotland. There are important questions to be asked about that, which I shall discuss later.
I listened carefully to what the Minister said. I believe that we need a strategy with a slightly different perspective north of the border. The best way to illustrate that is to consider what has been happening in the Republic of Ireland, which has a national anti-poverty strategy. We could learn many important lessons from that.
The Republic of Ireland has taken the United Nations 1995 Copenhagen resolution and set out a strategy in cold print. Annual reports of the strategy are produced; the first is a model of its kind. Scotland could adopt such a strategy. It could even be done within the integrity and the coherence of a United Kingdom social security-based system. Although, for reasons I shall explain, I am absolutely committed to keeping the coherence of a United Kingdom system, I believe that it would be possible for Scotland to adopt such a strategy.
The Under-Secretary might take the Irish example as a model and produce an annual anti-poverty report for Scotland, containing the same elements, showing how well—or otherwise—benefits were meeting modest but adequate needs. He might try to formulate plans. In the Green Paper, the Minister is bringing forward success measures. Some of those success measures are very difficult to quantify, but those in the Irish national anti-poverty strategy are very easily quantified.
The Irish are brave enough to determine what they believe to be a poverty line below which people should not fall. People do fall below it—sometimes that is inevitable. Hon. Members may spend too much time considering absolute numbers and snapshots, whereas some of the more important poverty problems start to emerge only when people have been in poverty for a long time. People who fall into poverty briefly should not concern us as much as those in long-term poverty. The statistics must be interpreted properly, correctly and sensitively, but at the moment there are next to no statistics for poverty north of the border to inform what will be a crucial debate, especially in Scottish terms, during the next 12 months.
I am especially disappointed by the progress made by the social exclusion unit north of the border. It has taken a little lottery money—£15 million to £20 million—and spent some of it on considering anti-truancy programmes; nothing else has happened. We were told that some great conference would take place in the summer. Lord Sewel, the Minister responsible for that, cannot answer for himself here tonight, but I hope that the Under-Secretary will tell us what is planned. I am repeatedly told that the conference will take place next week or next month—it keeps being delayed. There is no coherent action in Scotland that builds on the work of the social exclusion unit. It is disappointing that more has not been done.
There are very peculiar perspectives that we need to address in peculiar and special ways north of border. I need not tell the Under-Secretary that peripheral estates are a special problem; but there are also problems in rural

areas. Rural deprivation is a real issue, and it exists in Scotland not just in the highlands and islands, but in south-east and south-west Scotland. Many innovative project-based approaches are available which, used in a decentralised way through the social exclusion unit, with a little public finance—it would not break the bank in public expenditure terms—could make a real difference to real communities. People living in straitened financial circumstances in multiple deprivation in some housing estates would benefit from their deployment. I do not see any evidence that that is happening in Scotland today.
I support the Government's welfare-to-work programme, but I invite the Minister to examine the work of David Webster in Glasgow. He has deployed a plausible analysis of the situation. The problem is not skilling people so that they can participate in the labour market, but creating more jobs. In places such as Glasgow, there are simply not enough jobs. I know that there are special employment areas—although I do not know what will happen in them. It is early days, and we must be patient as the Government have been in office for only a year, but I think that David Webster is correct to point out that, despite all the up-skilling in the world, we will not achieve long-term progress if we simply see more and more people competing for a diminishing number of jobs.

Mr. Field: We have invited David Webster to visit the Department and give a seminar. I shall ensure that the hon. Gentleman receives an invitation to that event.

Mr. Kirkwood: Another invitation. I wish that the Minister would stop acting as though he were in charge of the Social Security Committee: he gives me so many things to do that I do not have time to do things for myself—and I have a sore back. I welcome the Minister's announcement; it is very good news. I look forward to seeing the results of that seminar.
It is all very well for the Minister to say, correctly, that the Government have invested £5 billion in the process—that is welcome—but what will happen when the money runs out? I do not believe that the problem of joblessness and the other difficulties that welfare to work seeks to address will be solved before the money is spent. What will happen in phase 2? If the Government are returned for another term, how will they finance phases 2 and 3 of the programme? We must view such things in the longer term.
The Government must address three other points in relation to Scotland. First, housing benefit is a key problem. The Government are still considering that issue, and we await their conclusion with bated breath. According to a recent newspaper article, about 80 per cent. of households in Glasgow receive some level of housing benefit. That is a terrible position to be in, and we must do something about it. I believe that the biggest hurdle to getting people off benefit and into work is housing benefit; it has a huge impact on preventing people from taking jobs.
Secondly, I urge the Government to examine the capital disregard thresholds for residential accommodation and, more important, means-tested benefits. The figure has been £3,000 for years. I cannot understand why the Government do not accept the need to uprate it. It is unfair and it impacts dramatically in Scotland. I hope that that issue is on the ministerial agenda.


Thirdly—and most important in Scottish terms—poor, elderly, single pensioners are the most deprived group in the country and require urgent attention. I do not mean that those pensioners are waiting for stakeholder pensions, tier 3 pensions, compulsory pensions or any future plans that must be addressed in the long term. This problem may exist in other parts of the world—I know that the Minister's constituency is not short of difficulties—but that generation of pensioners needs assistance.
I say openly to Scottish National party Members that we need better statistical information regarding the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and how social security will operate in that Parliament. If we were to increase taxation using existing powers, we would immediately affect incapacity benefit and the other six benefits that are taxable at present. We must be very careful about how we use existing taxation powers. As the hon. Member for North Tayside readily admitted, taxation and benefits are closely related. The hon. Gentleman called for greater integration. We must ensure that we take into account the social security aspects of any increase in taxation.
I ask the hon. Member for North Tayside to examine carefully the likely Scottish share of administrative costs and back-up if there were an independent Scotland. I have referred to the departmental report for this year, and figure 25 on page 39 reveals the Department's running costs as £3 billion. The social security Benefits Agency running costs are £2.6 billion, the Child Support Agency costs are £202 million, the Contributions Agency costs are £204 million, the War Pensions Agency costs are £32 million and the Information Technology Services Agency costs are £282 million. Without those services, benefits could not be paid.
If we add those sums together—as I did on the bus this morning—we get a total of £6 billion. If we divide that figure by 10 for a tenth of the population—this is fag packet economics with a vengeance—we can see that we must find £600 million-ish to run a free-standing benefit system north of the border. That does not take account of the Social Security Advisory Committee, the independent tribunal system for appeals and a whole raft of other bodies. One page of the departmental report reveals £600 million in costs. If we spend money on those services north of the border, we shall have a lot less money with which to pay benefits. I think that the situation is even worse than that.

Mr. Swinney: rose—

Mr. Kirkwood: I shall give way in a minute—I am not finished yet.
The Scottish National party must tell us how it would disaggregate the national insurance fund. Independence will create all sorts of problems; what mechanism will be used to disaggregate the national insurance fund? We all know that pensions are paid on a pay-as-you-go basis and that the Government of the day accept liabilities for the future on the basis of previous contributions. How will a Scottish Government in an independent Scotland begin to put together a programme that gives them the responsibility for future liabilities?
We must then ask ourselves: where are the contributions measured? Contributions are measured and collected by the national insurance computer. We are

involved in a private finance initiative arrangement—which is known as NIRS2—with Andersen International. That company has the international copyright for the system, so it is not just the Government with whom the Scottish National party will have to negotiate on the day independence dawns.
I wish that the Government Whip would not gesticulate at me—it is a bit obvious. I am enjoying myself; leave me alone.

Mr. Wallace: We are enjoying it, too.

Mr. Kirkwood: And I have a sore back.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Not only do I think that we should return to the subject of the debate; we are in danger of straying again into a debate on devolution—and I would not want hon. Members to do that.

Mr. Kirkwood: They are all against me. I take your point, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I give fair warning to the hon. Member for North Tayside: more work must be done in all those areas. If there is an independent jurisdiction north of the border, the operation of the Child Support Agency will create more problems. For example, people in the United States of America avoid parental liability by jumping states. People can travel from Newcastle to Edinburgh more easily than they can cross state boundaries in America. Furthermore, big differential rates of benefit will encourage people to migrate in order to receive more benefits. Having been engaged in that slight tirade for the past 10 minutes, I shall now give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Swinney: I shall interrupt the hon. Gentleman's tirade briefly. He referred to the costs involved in running the social security department, the Benefits Agency, the Contributions Agency and so on. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the people of Scotland already pay a proportion of those costs through their contributions to the national Exchequer? The hon. Gentleman has raised many important issues that must be part of the independence debate. I look forward to engaging him in that discussion.

Mr. Kirkwood: That is fine. We shall leave it at that. It is fair to say that we look forward to future debates. Certainly we must consider the sharing of costs. Potentially, we shall lose economies of scale.

Mr. Wallace: Does not my hon. Friend think that he is being too reasonable? Even taking one tenth is not an accurate estimate of what is involved, which is not only running costs. We shall have to duplicate capital costs. The figure will be greater than one tenth.

Mr. Kirkwood: Indeed.

Mr. Swinney: There are computer centres in Scotland.

Mr. Kirkwood: There are also two large computer centres at Blackpool and Newcastle. It is—[Interruption.]


I am being provoked. Cumbernauld is a bad example because it is not a mainframe computer. Livingston would be a better example. These arguments will continue.
We need a social security system that is based on the United Kingdom as a unit. There can be elements of decentralisation within that in a way that I do not think is in the Government's contemplation. I hope that the Government will examine the issues and the costs carefully so that the argument can proceed. I shall continue to support the Government on the basis of the principles that they have adopted and because they are engaging in an inclusive debate. That is important, but I do not think that the Government can congratulate themselves on having all the answers. There is a long way to go before we can say that.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in what has been a useful and, I hope, constructive debate. This is the first general debate on welfare reform, as the Minister fairly acknowledged. I intend to develop some of the points touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney), with a particular focus on the concerns of disabled groups about the development of government welfare policy and some of the detailed problems arising from the various new deals.
First, I wish to focus on the concerns of the disabled. My hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside has examined in some depth the problems surrounding the benefit integrity project. The arguments have been well rehearsed. I shall focus on the problems and opportunities facing individuals as a result of the new deal for the disabled and for the claimants of incapacity benefit.
Even the limited resources available for the new deal are welcome, but I would be interested to hear the Government's justification for spending 15 times less per head on the new deal for the disabled than on the new deal for the young. I ask the Minister to give a detailed commitment that the budget for the new deal for the disabled will be extended to a more reasonable level if these schemes prove to be successful, which we all hope they will be.
The focus on helping disabled people back into work is welcome, but only as far as it goes. In the run-up to the debate, I was provided with some briefing material from Disability Alliance. It makes the rather obvious point that many of the problems facing disabled people are not those of returning to the workplace but of staying in work when their condition first develops or when their health starts to deteriorate. Disability Alliance's briefing reads:
Every disabled person currently on Incapacity Benefit once had a job (IB being a contributory benefit). If some of these people had been provided with the appropriate support—financial and practical—when they first developed health or impairment problems they might have been able to remain in work.
That is something that we should all support. I should like to see the Government giving the maximum possible practical help to allow that to happen. The benefit system could be fine-tuned to help such people remain in work, by allowing them to move to part-time work, to a more limited job description or to additional training.
The mechanism employed by the new deal to bring people back into the workplace could and should be redeployed to help keep them in work. It seems ridiculous

that help is available only when people have fallen out of the job market or are struggling to get back into employment. I would appreciate it if the Minister, in replying to the debate, would expand on these important and practical points. It is more difficult to return to work after a period of unemployment than to redefine one's working capabilities when still employed.
Many of the criticisms of the new deal that focus on its concentration on people who are out of work rather than on those still in employment apply also to the assistance offered through the disabled persons tax credit, which I suggest could be amended to become a mechanism for job retention, as well as offer a route back into work. It would seem logical to apply the benefits of the disabled persons tax credit to those who become disabled while still working rather than allowing them to fall out of work and out of the workplace before they can receive assistance to re-enter it.
I know that the Government have been discussing the way forward with disability groups, but it might be useful for the Minister publicly to address concerns about the future of the disability living allowance and the possibility that an affluence test may apply or that disability benefits may be taxed. I hope that the Minister will respond to some of the real concerns that are being expressed. These are big issues that, with the impact of the benefit integrity project, are causing much concern in the community.
There are areas where fine tuning and minor reform would be widely welcomed and fit into the Government's strategy of encouraging disabled people back into work. The previous Government altered the definition of therapeutic work in such a way as effectively to exclude any disabled person whose condition was unalterable—for example, a blind person. The Tories also set a 16-hour limit on therapeutic work for those in receipt of incapacity benefit. Both changes need to be re-examined, and I call on the Government to return to the previous arrangement, which would allow more disabled people to take part in work which although not directly improving their condition would play a positive part in bolstering their self-confidence or improving the quality of their lives. These are practical steps that could be taken, which would be of immense benefit to the people involved.
As the Minister will be aware, my region of Scotland—Tayside—was one of the pilot regions for the new deal. The data on the initial success of these schemes are just beginning to appear and it is now too early in the day to judge whether the limited initial successes will be turned into something more sustainable. Future sustainability is the goal that we are all seeking.
Take-up rates among lone parents in pilot areas were disappointingly low. Only 10 per cent. took up interviews, and only 3 per cent. found work. I ask the Minister specifically to address those take-up rates, which we must all be dissatisfied with and concerned about. However, there are factors that may explain lone parents' reluctance to commit themselves to the new deal. First, the Government's decision to reduce lone parent benefits must have acted as a disincentive, and there was genuine fear that a temporary return to the workplace could result in a longer-term loss of benefit assistance.
The Minister must know the realities of the workplace today. There is no such thing as a job for life, so any government scheme must tackle the genuine fear that it is too great a risk to abandon the relative security of welfare support for the insecurity of the jobs market.


There are steps that could be taken, such as extending beyond the 12-week link period the time during which the benefit rights of lone parents—for the higher rate premium, for example—who do not return to welfare are protected. There could also be a phasing in of the removal of passport benefits, especially items such as free school meals. Such confidence-building measures may cost a little more in the short term but would produce a clear longer-term saving if they gave lone parents the confidence and support to enable them to make a successful transition back into employment.
Education and training is another route for lone parents that has been closed off to some extent under the current new deal proposals. Why do the Government not extend to lone parents the benefits offered under the education option of the new deal for young people? The extension of the travel and child care assistance rights to lone parents entering further education or embarking on a training course would allow them to develop the skills necessary to compete effectively in the jobs market and, obviously, to improve their chances of securing long-term employment.
My final comments on the detail of the Government's new deal proposals concern the new deal for young people and the difficulties that have suddenly been created for young people who are keen to remain in employment by the decision to set a two-rate minimum wage. There is little doubt that the greatest challenge for young people who find work through the new deal will come at 21, when their employers may face a 20 per cent. rise in the cost of employing them. The obvious danger is that employers will find it easier to replace 21-year-olds with 18-year-olds so that they can continue to pay lower wages. The new deal will be of limited worth if the minimum wage creates an unemployment black hole for young people as soon as they reach 22.
I have focused on the detail of specific welfare packages rather than on the broader sweep of welfare strategy. Although there have been successes in Government policy, there is still room for improvement. I hope that my remarks will be taken as constructive criticisms and positive suggestions. There is little doubt, however, that far more has to be done in respect of the bigger picture than a tweaking here or an extension there. The Government have to decide who the beneficiaries of their welfare reform strategy are supposed to be—the taxpayers of middle England or the vulnerable in society.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Sam Galbraith): Oh, come on.

Mr. Welsh: The Minister may say that, but the Government will have to face up to that decision when they seek re-election on the votes of middle England. They have adopted plenty of the previous Government's policies to do exactly that. It is a fair question, and I look forward to the Minister responding to it instead of scoffing from a sedentary position.
I put a specific question to the Minister. Who can afford to lose a few extra pennies a month—the higher rate taxpayer or the lone parent, the disabled person or the pensioner? I know what my answers would be and I know how the majority of Scots would answer. In a Scottish context, the Government have got their political

calculations wrong. Mrs. Thatcher put tax cuts before social cohesion, and look what happened to her popularity in Scotland. The Government's welfare strategy clashes with many of the dearly held principles of mainstream Scotland, which is why the people of Scotland are turning away in increasing numbers from new Labour's old Tory-style attacks on the social fabric of our nation. I simply say to the Minister: the Government have been warned.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: Although I am in danger of sounding like an elder statesperson in the House—I am in my fourth parliamentary term—I am amazed that Labour Back Benchers have not participated in the debate, other than to try to harass my hon. Friends the Members for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney) and for Angus (Mr. Welsh) during their speeches on a fundamentally important issue, which should be addressed with sincerity.
The Minister for Welfare Reform, whom I may have promoted to Secretary of State in an intervention, mentioned figures for expenditure on the mentally handicapped during the speech of the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne). We said that Scotland is third from bottom in terms of spending per head, but the Library has suggested that Scotland is fourth from bottom, and we have used its figures. The Minister will accept, however, that comparing different systems is difficult. Whether we are third or fourth from bottom is not an aspect that the Society for the Mentally Handicapped would want to hear about. Mental handicap and mental illness are often the forgotten aspects of social welfare, and they should be addressed much more seriously.
I assure the Minister for Welfare Reform that he will receive a comprehensive response from the Scottish National party by 31 July. I have participated in previous responses on issues pertaining to social welfare reviews, including the Fowler report. He, too, was involved in responses on that subject back in the 1980s. I hope that all responses, whether from political parties, voluntary organisations or statutory organisations, are taken on board. I find it distressing that people who are working in the forefront of the welfare system often think that their knowledge is ignored. I hope that the Government's responses will be constructive.
I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for North Tayside has opened up the debate. The SNP is given limited time to initiate debates in the House, but, if they studied our record, people would see that we have carefully chosen matters of genuine concern to the public. We have not made cheap political points, but have opened up spheres of interest so that the public know that people are working on the public interest.
The SNP initiated debate on the benefits integrity project when people did not realise exactly what was happening in that sphere. Concessions have been made because we initiated that debate, and they have been welcomed by parties in all parts of the House. I do not understand the difficulty in accepting that the SNP, which has independence as its goal, opens up such matters for genuine discussion in the House. I wish that some of the interventions had not been quite so petty.
The issue is what the public think is happening in the review of social welfare. The words in our motion were coined not by me or by my hon. Friends, but by supporters


of the governing party. They reflect a concern in society that has to be addressed. At one point, the Minister for Welfare Reform left his usual gentlemanly style behind and read a brief from one of the spin doctors, because he clearly thought that we had coined those words. That was unlike him, because he is usually courteous.
I should like to think that we shall have high-quality debates on this subject, especially when the responses have come in, and I presume that we will go into it in greater detail during the next Session. Unfortunately, no SNP Members serve on the Social Security Committee, although we hope to be allocated a place on it in the interests of consensus, and hope to submit oral and written evidence.
One of the difficulties that the Minister for Welfare Reform faces is that he is too genuine a person—it is almost a curse when everyone says that they respect him. When the rumour went around the House that No. 10 had said that a new Beveridge was needed to think the unthinkable, the response was, "Coffee or tea?" He would not take such a facetious approach to this political issue, because he has taken on board the changes in our society and the need for new approaches. He has had difficulties in his party and in his constituency association because of the strong stances he has taken.
Like the Minister for Welfare Reform, I recognise that there are no simple solutions to the welfare issues that society faces. If there were, there would be a unanimous vote in the House—we would all walk into the same Lobby if we could immediately resolve those problems. I hope that we can join together and argue for a sensible approach to the problems that have been outlined by my hon. Friend and other participants in this debate.
I wish to pick up on an issue that is dear to my heart—the demographic time bomb that faces our society because of the growing number of elderly people. When I worked as an social services administrator, we referred to the problem in the Strathclyde and Dumfries Galloway area as a "sleeping elephant". Most Members of Parliament realise from their constituency postbags and surgeries that it is a serious problem. The problems experienced by elderly people are vast. Points have been made about the elderly single pensioner, and the problems of housing, benefit, warmth and heating, and a variety of health matters.
I recently read an article, which I would recommend to the Minister and to the Minister of State, Scottish Office, who may already have read it. On 13 June, the Herald magazine published a review of a book by Linda Grant, in which she speaks about the problems that she and her family faced with their elderly mother who suffered from dementia. The book is entitled "Remind Me Of Who I Am, Again".
Some of us have experienced the same problems with elderly parents or elderly members of our families, and I am sure that nearly every Member of Parliament has experienced problems with constituents who face the same difficulties. Linda Grant speaks about the guilt that is felt, about the decisions that have to be made, and about choosing between permanent and residential care. I recommend that hon. Members at least read extracts from the book. This is not a commercial for the book; the subject is close to my heart.
The review was followed by an article by Reg McKay in the same weekend magazine. The figures he quoted came essentially from the Association of Directors of Social Work—I think that the Scottish Office Minister was present at the relevant conference. He said:
Constant, 24-hour support at home from the cheapest provider will cost at least £50,000 per person per year and as much as £80,000 in rural areas.
That is if we hope to keep elderly people within the community. He went on:
It is estimated that Scotland has 340,000 elderly living in the community, who need care or support … There are 125,000 people in Scotland who are practically full-time carers.
Those carers sacrifice their careers, relationships, education and leisure.
The Association of Directors of Social Work has advised that it should be
a central aim of social policy … to support and to complement the long-term care given by carers
and that there should be
a simultaneous development of community services".
That aspect can be considered within the Scottish Parliament, because local government, health and community care will come within its auspices.
The Minister asked earlier whether we could make recommendations. Obviously we shall make our own recommendations in our response to the Government's paper, but during the conference, the ADSW made 16 firm recommendations in the context of the elderly, and I would certainly recommend them to the Ministers present today, because I very much agree with them.
One of the greatest problems faced by elected Members is that our constituents approach us with fears of uncertainty about what the welfare programme holds. When the benefits integrity project was introduced, many worried disabled people asked us whether they would be reviewed and would lose money. I have a substantial file on the difficulties that those people faced. Without the work that was done by the citizens advice bureaux in my area and the Benefits Agency, many people would have been even more deeply worried. Indeed, I still receive letters on that subject.
The Government must ensure that no action is ever taken which worries an individual who feels vulnerable. It is easy for Ministers to say that they recognise that, but let us ensure that the legislation we introduce is sensible and comprehensible to all those involved. Let us have genuine proposals, not just circulated thoughts that cause unnecessary and unwarranted concern.
The subject of pensions is extremely complex. The Minister and I have worked together, on all-party and other groups, on that subject. I do not want to malign other hon. Members, but I suspect that most of those in the Chamber today are roughly of the same generation as me. Various options were open to us, but no options were open to the older generation. They assumed that, by paying their national insurance contributions, they would be guaranteed security until the end of their days.
I am always impressed when we interview young people who come forward for employment opportunities. At the age of 20 or 21, one of the first questions they ask is, "What are your pension provisions?" Thus there is a generation gap. I recognise the difficulty of drawing lines


at any point, but we owe a debt to our older generation, who assumed that in the post-war period they would be looked after until the end of their days.
In opening up this debate, which I know will be continued, we have put forward our motion in a genuine desire for a constructive debate. It is incumbent on all of us, as representatives of the electorate, to do so. We should not attempt to make party political points on the matter, as some hon. Members tried to do earlier. It deserves genuine and serious consideration. The Scottish Parliament will have the opportunity to consider welfare, health and community issues. In the meantime, we must address those matters with all seriousness.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Sam Galbraith): You will be delighted to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that, not being an aficionado on this subject—indeed, it is unusual for me to speak on it—I shall not take long in replying. However, I have enjoyed listening to the various aficionados speak so briefly on the issues before us, and I shall try to deal with one or two of the points raised.
The hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Welsh) asked about the disabled. He has a long and reputable history of support for, and of speaking in the House on, the disabled, which he continued tonight. He asked whether we would spend more on the disabled in the new deal. The answer is yes; we have only made a start, and are waiting for other projects and proposals. Should they prove useful and beneficial, that will be done.
The hon. Gentleman also asked what we can do for people who are in work. We shall consider how we can retain them in projects under the new deal. We are looking into anti-discrimination legislation to ensure that it is easier for them to retain their jobs.
The hon. Gentleman made other points, and I hope that he will include them in his party's submissions on the Green Paper. He spoiled his speech at the end by referring yet again to middle England, as if it was a headed monster that is different from middle Scotland. I realise that he cannot throw off the habits of a lifetime—his bad political practices, and his usual whinges and cringes. Apart from that, it was a reasonable performance.
I was grateful to the hon. Member—is it Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles? Roxburgh and Berwickshire.

Mr. Kirkwood: Middle borders.

Mr. Galbraith: Middle borders, thank you. The House was grateful for his very short speech. It lasted about 18 minutes, but for him that was a short speech. He asked for better data. We have begun a project that will enable us to disaggregate and collect much better data. That is important, particularly in the context of the new assembly.
The hon. Gentleman asked me to investigate the Irish anti-poverty strategy, and referred to the social exclusion unit. We already have an anti-poverty strategy: it is to deal with social exclusion. Perhaps he has not heard us talk about the new deal, but I cannot believe that. Our strategy is to do with rural inequalities in health, priority partnership areas, urban programmes, the new deal for

schools, and child care. We do not want more money pumped into research and theoretical arguments about what is or is not poverty: we want action. The social exclusion unit met for the first time on Monday, and it is considering all the data.
I waited with great anticipation to hear the hon. Member for North Tayside (Mr. Swinney), who introduced the debate. He is generally considered to be one of the more thinking members of the Scottish National party. [Interruption.] That does not say much for the rest of them. [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that he should address his remarks to the Chair.

Mr. Galbraith: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman's speech, although it was rambling and vacuous at times. I say that as a friend of his: I am not being awkward. He fell into the trap of bandying around nebulous statistics. The statistics produced by the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends usually have no firm basis, and are only used to effect. The hon. Gentleman said in The Scotsman today:
statistics analysed by the SNP"—
we now know that they were not analysed by the SNP, but were given to him by the Library—
showed that the UK was already spending less per head on welfare support than 12 of its partners in the European Union.
My right hon. Friend the Minister made the point that total expenditure is not the main measure of social welfare—it is what we do with it that counts. As my right hon. Friend said, the United States spends more than 10 per cent. of its gross domestic product on health, yet it has a worse, not a better, service, because it wastes a large proportion of that expenditure.
The hon. Member for North Tayside should not indulge in silly notions of spending per head. It is extremely difficult to make statistical comparisons across nations. The populations being compared must be the same, and they usually vary from area to area. However, the method accepted in Europe is called social protection expenditure. The latest figures—

Mr. Welsh: "It says here."

Mr. Galbraith: Yes, I have done a bit of research on this as well. It is interesting, because I realise how much rubbish is talked.
The social protection expenditure figures show that we are not bottom of the league. In fact, we are average. Many countries are below us, including Belgium, Greece, Ireland, which the Scottish National party is always keen to mention, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain. We should take all these figures with a little pinch of salt. Every time we analyse figures produced by the Scottish National party, the only thing we can be sure about is that they are wrong.
I was also disappointed with the Scottish nationalists' big new ideas. They have been thinking about this issue for a long time, and wanted a full debate. What were their big new ideas? More bureaucracy. They suggested another welfare rights officer for Scotland, which would duplicate what we already do UK-wide to promote


benefits. We have many pilot projects: the Secretary of State for Social Security was in Paisley only yesterday at one of these projects. Never mind duplicating the work of local authority welfare rights officers: let us have more bureaucracy. The Scottish National party's only suggestion for the social security system in Scotland is more and more bureaucracy.
The Scottish nationalists' argument was full of straw men. They say that they want a social security system that concentrates on the needy. Was anyone arguing about that? They just kept repeating their argument. I was slightly disappointed that no reference was made to what has been done. The new deal and its various facets were briefly mentioned, but that was all. The hon. Member for North Tayside did not talk about the minimum wage. The hon. Member for Angus mentioned it, but only to deride it. There were no thanks for introducing a minimum wage for the first time ever in this country. He just whinged about it as usual.
Nothing was said about the new deal for schools or child care. How can we talk about a social strategy for the country and never mention child care? The hon. Gentlemen never mentioned the proposals in our Green Paper, and they did not make a proposal of their own. Nothing was said about what we have done to improve the tax and benefits system. Family tax credits will give working families £180 a week, which is equivalent to a national minimum wage of £5 an hour. The hon. Gentleman did not mention any of those proposals.
The hon. Member for North Tayside did not deal with this issue in the round. There is no one solution to this problem. We must consider the whole structure: the health service, housing and education. Above all, we must provide jobs. A job is the key that unlocks the door to everything. We have provided not only a safety net, which the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) asked for, but a springboard to the future, and a stake in society.
Many of our problems result from unemployment. If people are unemployed, they have no future and no stake in society. They need a job to have a future, to have a stake and to have the economic means to make choices. That is why our social strategy is based on giving people a job. If we give them a job, we give them integrity, decency, a stake in society and a future. That is what a Labour Government will give them.

Question, That the original words stand part of the Question, put and negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments) and agreed to.

MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House welcomes the Government's comprehensive approach to welfare reform around the principle of work for those who can, security for those who cannot, which was set out in the Welfare Reform Green Paper; notes the Government's commitment to consultation with organisations of, and for, disabled people, and the substantial safeguards included in the Benefit Integrity Project; notes the Government's commitment to helping today's and tomorrow's pensioners and welcomes the establishment of the Pensions Review and the action taken already to help today's pensioners through cutting VAT on fuel and paying winter fuel payments to all pensioners; notes that the New Deals for Lone Parents, for the Young and Long-Term Unemployed and for Disabled People are the largest assault on worklessness and social

exclusion ever undertaken in Britain; and welcomes the action taken by the Government in the Budget to support families and children through increasing child benefit and the family premium in income support and by the proposals to introduce a working family tax credit and a disabled person's tax credit.'.

Forest of Dean

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Betts.]

Mrs. Diana Organ: Mr. Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me the opportunity of bringing the issue of the environmental protection of the forest of Dean to the Floor of the House of Commons.
When I secured the debate, I suspected that perhaps only I and the Minister would be here on a Thursday evening, with no Friday sitting. I am pleased to realise that, with the debate starting at this earlier hour, I have the opportunity to press my case for two and a half hours. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is always happy to listen to representations on the issue. However, I reassure him that I will take far less time, as I know that he will be able to respond to my questions in less than two and a half hours.
I thank the hon. Members who are in the Chamber for showing their support in an issue which is of wider interest than just my constituency. It concerns protecting a part of Britain which is valuable to the whole nation, since it is a landscape treasured by many—both local and visitor. The forest of Dean sits between the rivers Severn and Wye. It has long been known as a great area of beauty. Daniel Defoe, in his travels around Britain in the 18th century, commented on the spectacular views and towering oaks.
Successive Governments in this century have looked at protecting the area. It was one of the first areas to be considered by the national parks committee in 1929 and by Ramsay MacDonald's Government. In 1938, it was designated a national forest park, predating consideration given to the New forest. In 1947, the Hobhouse committee looked at granting national park status to the forest of Dean, but decided against it, and against the lesser status of area of outstanding natural beauty. Each time, the forest did not gain protection, which was deemed unnecessary on the ground that, as an ancient royal hunting forest, it would be protected by the Forestry Commission.
In 1974, there were investigations into making the forest an area of outstanding natural beauty, but again it was left out—principally for the same reason that applied in 1929, 1938 and 1947. However, changes made to the Forestry Commission under the previous Administration mean that this body alone can in no way be considered as a guardian or protector of our area.
The area, which is vulnerable and demands environmental protection, is much wider than those administered by Forest Enterprise. The limited guardianship offered by Forest Enterprise to only parts of our environment is not enough—it is not, nor is it intended to be, the custodian of this wooded limestone escarpment.
Times have changed. Over the past 50 years, the pressures and demands on land use and the scale and effect of intrusive and invasive development mean that we must act now to protect the area before it is too late. The valued area of the Forest of Dean is particularly vulnerable to those demands and pressures. Areas of wilderness, forest, moor and marsh are scarce in our densely populated island. Those that remain need to be recognised and protected by the Government for the whole nation and for future generations.
The Government are committed to greater access to the countryside for all people and are actively working to improve access for many, recognising that, by being in such a wonderful environment and taking pleasures in the landscape, town and rural dwellers alike can relax and restore their spirits. In the forest of Dean, we welcome warmly the opportunity for as many as possible to share our beautiful landscape. It is our greatest asset, and a vital component of our rural economy.
The forest of Dean attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. They come to relax, walk, ramble, climb, ride, cycle and fish, and to learn about our arts, crafts and industrial heritage. We need them to come and enjoy themselves. We need them, of course, to spend their money. They are important contributors to the rural economy. The revenue and jobs created by tourists helps our economy to remain vibrant, and are a force in the regeneration of our area. They come to see Dennis Potter's "Blue Remembered Hills"—the breathtaking vistas which only limestone escarpments cut through by rivers can offer. I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to refresh his weary spirit and take a little time to relax in the summer recess by coming to enjoy the beauty and splendour of the forest of Dean.
Increased access to a landscape which is despoiled, degraded, diminished and damaged offers nothing. Visitors will not come to see spoil heaps or gaping scars in the view. They come to escape noise, dust, pollution and congestion. The very aspects that the tourists come to see are those which are vulnerable to large-scale invasive activity.
We have no environmental protection in the forest of Dean against the growth of that kind of activity. There is no regime to protect the area for the nation. We do not even have the protection that the Labour Government of 1945 believed would be there. The forest of Dean does not even have recognition of its valuable landscape.
The spectacular landscape wraps itself around small towns and villages which reflect our industrial heritage. We do not have chocolate-box villages. They are instead industrial working settlements. The forest of Dean has a long, proud industrial heritage based on iron ore, limestone quarrying and deep coal mining. Its skills are those of engineering and manufacturing. Our economy is heavily based on industry. The forest, therefore, would not seek, or want, blanket protection that national park status would give. It would stifle the economic regeneration which is desperately needed to revitalise our market towns.
The status of an area of outstanding natural beauty may be sufficient for areas such as the Cotswolds, but we feel that it would be insufficient to ensure that large-scale intrusive developments could be prevented in the Dean. That is another of our dilemmas. The future economic vibrancy of the forest of Dean is dependent on mutually beneficial planning regimes which enable appropriate and sympathetic development but protect and preserve the valuable environment and vistas. The beautiful landscape is increasingly vulnerable, and that is recognised by many of my constituents and local authorities.
The landscape is vulnerable to opencast mining and inappropriate large-scale leisure developments. At present, it is most threatened by extensions to quarrying activity—a common threat in limestone areas. Areas of great beauty, such as the Mendips and the Peak district,


are subject to large-scale quarrying, as limestone is the gift of God—providing not only good-quality rock that is easy and cheap to extract, but beautiful scenery.
Gloucestershire county council, for instance, has identified new areas of search on the limestone escarpment as part of their local minerals plan. It was suggested that the forest of Dean would have to accommodate new quarries along the splendid ridge. Although quarrying activity has been carried out in the area for centuries—there is quarrying for aggregates by both large-scale and small-scale operators—at present that is more or less accommodated within our landscape.
Indeed, companies such as Tarmac at Stowefield and Arc at Drybrook work hard to give good-quality environmental screening and take measures to minimise dust and noise pollution. They work and liaise with the local community. I received a letter from Drybrook parish council, which is next to the Arc quarry. The council wrote to me in response to an article in The Mail on Sunday to say that the quarry in the parish provided jobs, but did not pollute or disrupt the environment.
The proposed major expansion of quarrying highlights the vulnerability of the limestone area and has focused my constituents' minds with legitimate concerns. They have formed a campaign group to raise the issue and to alert both local and central Government to the potential problems. They have been shouting loudly for some time.
I must make clear that this is not a case of "not in my back yard" or of whingeing locals who are concerned only with their house's value. They have genuine concerns that the large-scale invasive activity that the proposed new quarry would bring will irrevocably damage the asset of this exquisite environment; not just for themselves—they are not that kind of campaigner. They are concerned about our tourist economy and the whole nation.
In spring 1997, in response to the campaign, the then shadow Secretary of State for the Environment—now the Secretary of State for Health—my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) visited the forest of Dean and took on board the unique needs of the area. He pledged that an incoming Labour Government would provide the environmental protection that the area required. They would recognise the value of the landscape, and seek to protect its vulnerability. However, they would also knowledge the dilemma of having to protect beautiful scenery while not stifling necessary economic regeneration of towns and villages.
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning for all the efforts that he and his Department have made in realising that pledge; for his time in meeting two delegations from the forest of Dean; for answering all my numerous letters and inquiries; and for always giving me his time and attention when I raised the issue with him in the Tea Room, the Lobby and the Corridor, and at all the meetings that we happen to be at together. Most of all, I want to thank him for supplying us with the avenue for the process, so that we can evaluate and quantify the situation, and allow consultation through the democratic planning process.
I thank the Minister also for pressing Gloucestershire county council to complete speedily its draft minerals plan, so that the matter can move on to public inquiry.

Mr. Paul Keetch: I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this Adjournment debate. The next time

that she meets the Minister in the Tea Room or Lobby, will she perhaps raise with him an issue that concerns not only the forest of Dean but south Herefordshire? As tolls on the old Severn bridge are imposed on traffic going only in one direction, very many heavy goods vehicles going in that direction use instead Gloucestershire's and south Herefordshire's roads, byways and even B roads to avoid paying a toll. It is about time that tolls on that bridge were imposed on traffic going in both directions—between England and Wales—or not at all. Significant environmental damage is being caused, in south Herefordshire, to the forest of Dean because of that situation.

Mrs. Organ: I should like to deal with one campaign at a time, with one Minister at a time. I really do not want to overburden the Minister by being on his back about all the issues. However, I should say that I have already written to the Minister of Transport about that very issue, which concerns both my constituents and those of the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch).
It is crucial that we undergo a public consultation process, as our pre-election pledge of environmental protection did not detail its parameters—its remit or the areas to be included. In the pledge, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health was quite clear that all of those issues would have to be put out to public consultation. He did not say—neither was it ever agreed—that the matters would have to be settled later. What areas were to be covered—the old royal hunting forest, all of the district council area, all of my constituency, or only the St. Briavels hundred?
Some people may have thought that, after the general election, the pledge could simply be slotted into place without public consultation. However, there was no mapping out of which areas were to be included, or explanation of which types of development the forest required protection from. All those issues must be resolved using the democratic process—by public consultation, through the planning process.
The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning is a driving force in the Government's determination to modernise the planning process—a system that was established by the 1945 Labour Government and has generally served us well. His policy statement, "Modernising Planning", makes the Government's policy clear—that all future development must be sustainable, both economically and environmentally.
I welcome the Minister's commitment, but the issue is broader than quarrying control. This debate is not only about limestone quarrying. The pledge was made, and it must have a wider remit—to cover any large-scale, invasive activity that could detract from the area's natural beauty. Such activity was encompassed in the pledge given in spring 1997.
It is important that the Government are seen to be delivering on the commitment that they made. The pledge therefore has a wider political significance, which concerns not only the people of my constituency but others. The new Labour Government must be seen to be building trust between the electorate and Government; and we are doing that. We are delivering on what we said we would do—for example, on modernising Britain, and on reforming the constitution. Only this week in the House, we have been working on Bills to incorporate the


European convention on human rights into United Kingdom law; and, in our Crime and Disorder Bill, we are delivering the fast track for young offenders. Those are pledges that are being fulfilled. We have to continue that work, to deliver on all our pledges.
In proceeding with the consultation offered as part of the minerals plan, the county council chairman of the minerals panel, Councillor David Gayler, would like to be assured that the inspector holding the inquiry will be able to include in his or her brief the proposal for a custom-built status for the forest of Dean, and that the inquiry will have the wide remit that we seek. The county council is currently preparing a paper on the issue.
I and many other people wish a public consultation with a wider remit to be established—similar to that which was conducted on the New forest, which recommended that "bespoke" planning conditions should be applied to that area. The forest of Dean has many similarities to the New forest. The New forest, too, is an ancient royal forest that was initially protected by the Forestry Commission. It, too, is controlled by a single local authority, and has a very beautiful landscape, which is under threat and did not have any protection.
The public inquiry for the New forest was particularly lengthy, taking many years. I know that the Minister is keen, as part of the modernisation process, to shorten the time that is sometimes required to reach planning decisions. The policy document states:
There can be no justification in a modern planning system for procedures which take years to produce".
I ask the Minister to ensure that we in the forest of Dean do not have to wait years for that protection, and that the matter is dealt with at all stages as speedily as possible. The issue is not a local one—neither politically nor environmentally.
As a Government, we have a responsibility to deliver on our pledges, to keep trust with people, to plan wisely, to protect our valuable areas and to ensure that development is sustainable and for the mutual benefit of all.

The Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning (Mr. Richard Caborn): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ) for not taking two and a half hours to explain her case to the House. I am sure that all hon. Members will be pleased about that, as we were expecting to get extremely late trains tonight. It is pleasant that we may be able to get home a little earlier than we had planned.
I am pleased also that my hon. Friend has raised the issue of the proper protection of the forest of Dean. As she said, I have twice met her and delegations of her constituents, including local councillors, to discuss the potential problems in the forest of Dean and the best way forward in resolving their concerns. I therefore feel that I have a reasonable grasp of the specific worries of those campaigning for greater protection of the forest of Dean. I also continue to believe that—as she said—we identified early in our discussions, in October 1997, the most effective and realistic way forward.
I recognise the fears of many of my hon. Friend's constituents over their vision of large-scale new quarrying in the forest of Dean. As has been clearly explained in

this debate, the forest of Dean is a beautiful part of our countryside. However, traditionally, it has also been a hard-working area in which mining has been an important local industry. The concerns of my hon. Friend and her constituents have centred, although not exclusively, on the quarrying industry.
We have an established and long-standing system in Britain for regulating the activities of the quarrying industry. The system balances modern society's need for the industry's products with careful planning of the industry's location and activities and regard for its environmental impact.
The mechanisms for considering the industry's impact at the local level is the minerals local plan. Such plans are the mechanism against which the granting of minerals permissions is assessed across the country, and the mechanism that must be used in the forest of Dean.
I believe that the fears that have grown in the forest of Dean because of possible development of new quarries are a result of the early work of Gloucestershire county council on the minerals local plan for Gloucestershire. Last year, Gloucestershire county council's officials identified certain areas in the forest that would be capable of meeting the county's sub-regional apportionment of aggregates provision. That early exploratory work did not constitute an invitation to the quarrying industry to submit applications for new quarries; nor did it necessarily mean that the areas that the officials were considering would appear in the final version of the Gloucestershire minerals local plan.
As I have often made clear to campaigners from the forest of Dean, the way of resolving those matters is for Gloucestershire county council to produce the minerals local plan for public scrutiny. As my hon. Friend said, I have written to Gloucestershire county council to remind it of the importance of producing its plan. Forest of Dean campaigners asked me to do that, and I did so very soon after our meeting.
All future quarrying planning applications will be considered with reference to that plan, and it is crucial, therefore, that it is debated and agreed at the local level as quickly as possible. That debate can properly include a public inquiry, if that turns out to be appropriate. The debate will not only eventually resolve the question of any possible new quarrying within the forest, but help in assessing whether any new additional environmental status needs to be given to the forest of Dean.
On the role of the inspector in the context of a public inquiry into the minerals local plan, I must make it clear that the plan inquiry could not make any decisions about special status for the forest of Dean. The role of an inspector in the local plan process is to hold the inquiry into objections to the published local plan and to report to the council with recommendations. He or she carries out that role independently, against the background of existing Government policy, so it would not be appropriate for Ministers to issue any instructions to the inspector in relation to any possible status for the forest of Dean.
Nevertheless, in subsequently considering the appropriateness of special status, Ministers would have the benefit of any views expressed at the inquiry or in written representations and recorded in the inspector's report to the council. To be relevant to the inquiry, those views would need to be expressed as objections to a particular proposal in the plan.


The campaigners for the protection of the forest have to recognise that there is no immediately available one-off solution by which I could simply exclude all quarrying from the forest of Dean. I cannot draw a line around the area and issue a proclamation. Even in national parks there is not an absolute ban on quarrying, although there has to be a strong case to allow new quarrying in such areas. The Government have made our determination on those matters clear in our decision not to approve an extension to Spaunton quarry in the North York moors national park.
Two national designations are potentially available to the Government in awarding landscape and planning protection to the forest of Dean. They are the designations of national park or area of outstanding natural beauty. Both are concerned with far more than merely quarrying. The delegations that I have met from the forest of Dean have said that they do not consider either of those designations as appropriate to the forest. That is because both designations apply strong planning protection, which some people fear might adversely affect some of the imaginative regeneration schemes that are being developed for the forest. That demonstrates the difficulty involved in achieving just the right level of protection to safeguard the environment, while nurturing the development of local communities.
I now understand that my hon. Friend is looking for a solution that takes into account the various other pressures on the forest, such as those from visitor numbers. Those issues are central to the system of protected areas designation.
The Countryside Commission has been undertaking work on various questions concerned with protected areas nationally and is about to submit its formal report to the Government. That will deal with the future status and management arrangements of the New forest and the south downs, as well as the Countryside Commission's proposals for enhanced funding and management of areas of outstanding natural beauty.
As a follow-up to that advice, my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment has asked the Countryside Commission to look again at the forest of Dean. Since the criteria for national park status were laid down in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, the forest of Dean has never been among the limited number of areas considered potentially suitable as a national park. It was given at least informal consideration as an area of outstanding natural beauty, but that has so far not come to fruition.
I understand that, in the 1950s and 1960s, when most of the designation programme was proceeding, there may have been an assumption that the involvement of the Forestry Commission in the forest of Dean was sufficient to provide the protection required. I am told that the matter was last looked at in 1971, when the local authorities concerned were consulted, but did not wish to proceed with designation as an area of outstanding natural beauty. The Wye valley area of outstanding natural beauty, which was designated in 1971, runs along the western edge of the forest. Whatever the previous conclusions and despite the earlier doubts of the anti-quarrying campaigners about area of outstanding natural beauty status, times change and the Countryside Commission is now looking afresh at the question.
In consultation with the local authorities and the Forestry Commission, the Countryside Commission is employing specialist consultants to help it to review how the position has changed since 1971, the land management, access and recreation pressures, the potential impact of any future minerals extraction and what the options might be, including AONB designation, to secure the future of the forest of Dean. There will be a steering group to take account of the views and interests of the key stakeholders, and the commission is looking carefully at the best way to take account of wider views.
As part of the study, the commission will look expressly at the suitability of AONB designation. Planning policy guidance provides that any applications for new or extended mineral workings in areas of outstanding natural beauty must be subject to the most rigorous examination and be demonstrated to be in the public interest. In general, policies and development control decisions affecting areas of outstanding natural beauty should favour conservation of the natural beauty of the landscape.
The Countryside Commission could recommend a special status, but the one option available to it without primary legislation but with the support of the Secretary of State would be an area of outstanding natural beauty. As my hon. Friend knows, if the commission recommended special status and the Government accepted the recommendation, it would require primary legislation; it would have to join the queue and could take some time to get through. I hope that campaigners in the forest of Dean will make what they want known to the commission.
My hon. Friend referred to the position in the New forest as a possible way forward for the forest of Dean. I can assure my hon. Friend that the campaigners for greater protection in the New forest are not happy with the current arrangements there. In 1994, the previous Government took the unusual decision to award the New forest heritage area the planning status of a national park, without the usual designation or administrative arrangements for a national park. They wanted the boundary of the heritage area to be defined in the local plan process. The fact that that process is still not complete shows the cumbersome nature of those arrangements, and I think that my hon. Friend referred to the time that had been taken already.
As I have said, Ministers will shortly be looking at the Countryside Commission's advice on the possible ways forward in the New forest. I do not regard the current arrangements in the New forest as a suitable precedent for the forest of Dean. In any case, those were based on the long-standing view of the Countryside Commission, which is responsible for the designations subject to the confirmation of the Secretary of State, that the New forest is suitable for a national park level of designation under the terms of the 1949 Act. The forest of Dean is a different case. It has not been considered appropriate for national park status under the legislation, but, as I have made clear, the question of AONB status remains open.
I am glad to have had the opportunity to give those issues a proper airing in the debate. The House will recognise that, far from reneging on an election pledge, the Government are tackling the issue of quarrying in the forest of Dean head on. Before coming to power, we said


that we would consult local groups, local businesses and the district and county councils on how best to sustain the character and prosperity of the forest and its community. I have made it plain that the best way to achieve that consultation in the context of quarrying in the forest of Dean is to use the existing public inquiry procedures, which occur during the preparation of Gloucestershire county council's minerals local plan. We have also now provided an opportunity for views to be fed to the Countryside Commission as part of a wide-ranging look at what might be the best means of providing appropriate protection for the forest in the future. Those who really have the interests of the forest at heart should now get down and concentrate their energies on putting across their views in the public debate at the local level. That is where the decisions can be affected.
It would be pleasing if the reporting were slightly more objective; it would not be a bad idea if, from time to time, journalists contacted the Department, so that we could put our views. That would allow for a slightly more constructive debate than the one that has being going on in some of the heavy newspapers and the Sundays.
I hope that I have outlined a clear way in which our manifesto pledge can now be carried out. I hope, very genuinely, that those who have visited my office over the past few months will now get down to putting their case succinctly to the two bodies that are considering it—the minerals plan inquiry and the Countryside Commission. I am sure that we will be able to find a satisfactory solution to what clearly is a problem.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Eight o'clock.